Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server running OpenSolaris 2009.06 and the latest version of Sun's Java(TM) Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) software (version 1.6.0_14 Performance Release) delivered the highest ever single-chip server result on the industry standard measure of JVM performance.

This result confirms the SPARC Enterprise T5220 server as one of the highest performing and most efficient platform on the planet for deployment of secure Java-based B2B Enterprise applications.

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• The SPARC Enterprise T5220 server equipped with one 1.6GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor obtained a single chip world record result of 231,464 Business Operations per Second.
• This record-breaking result represents a real-world server-side Java application deployment scenario and demonstrates the optimized performance of Sun's software offerings. With a 20 percent performance boost over the previous 1.4GHz single chip result, the SPARC Enterprise T5220 server demonstrates outstanding scalability while allowing customers to easily expand their blades infrastructure via a simple in-chassis upgrade.
• Compared to the IBM System p 570, equipped with 4.7GHz POWER6 processor and running AIX 5L v5.3 OS, the single processor SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivers 2.6x better performance.
• Compared to the IBM System x3200 M2, equipped with 3.16 GHz Intel Xeon X3380 processors and running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition x64 OS, the single processor SPARC Enterprise T5220 server has eight percent better performance.
• Utilizing the latest releases of OpenSolaris 2009.06 OS and Sun HotSpot JVM software allows the SPARC Enterprise T5220 server to set a new standard for scalability by fully leveraging all 64 hardware threads available in the UltraSPARC T2 processor, while consuming only 520 watts of power on average.

• Press Release

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, powered by 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor and running the Java System Messaging Server 6.2, a part of Sun Java Enterprise System 4, on top of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), established a new world record on the SPECmail2009 benchmark. Sun is the first vendor to publish on this new benchmark, further demonstrating its leadership in corporate e-mail serving.

SPECmail2009 is a new benchmark that replaces all previous versions and is designed to simulate real-world corporate e-mail environments and measure a system's ability to serve e-mail using industry-standard SMTP and IMAP4 protocols. The SPECmail2009 benchmark can generate e-mail server workloads of up to 40,000 corporate users and supports encrypted network connections via SSL v3.0 or TLS 1.0 technologies. SPECmail2009 sessions per hour is the main metric of the benchmark and it reflects the maximum number of sessions that the mail server can sustain while maintaining a specific Quality of Service (QoS).

Benchmark Outcome

• The SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, achieved a new World Record result of 17,316 SPECmail2009 sessions/hour, equivalent to 3,600 SPECmail_Ent2009 users.
• These results highlight the enterprise-class performance and significant infrastructure and management cost savings Sun's Open Network Systems with the Solaris™ Operating System (OS) deliver through the convergence of compute, networking and storage. The powerful combination of the SPARC Enterprise T5220 server and Sun StorageTek 2540 arrays demonstrate Sun's leadership position in e-mail serving using an off-the-shelf OS and software components on an industry-standard benchmark.
• The SPARC Enterprise T5220 system coupled with StorageTek 2540 HW RAID storage arrays and StorageTek 2501 Expansion trays was configured with the ZFS file system which offers continuous data integrity and protection at no additional cost.
• Sun's solution proves that a single socket low power CMT server can support an enterprise level IMAP mail server environment with high throughput requirements while delivering impressive performance and maximum data integrity.

• Benchmark Results

Oracle and Sun jointly ran a benchmark to measure the batch performance of a payroll process in Oracle's E-Business Suite Payroll 11i with Oracle 10g database running on an 8-core Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server with the open-source Solaris 10 Operating System.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise Server is capable of generating over 64,000 paychecks per hour running the Payroll Process portion of the benchmark. The benchmark results demonstrated that a single socket UltraSPARC T2-based server can outperform systems with four Intel processors in the hourly throughput, while maintaining lower CPU utilization.

These results prove that Sun's CoolThreads servers are very well suited to run relational databases such as Oracle 10g and are excellent platforms to process batch workloads like Oracle Applications Payroll 11i.

• The full benchmark report can be found here

• A blog discussing the results is posted here

• All result can be found here

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server running the Solaris 10 OS and Sun Java System Web Server set a new world record in Web server performance and performance per watt on the industry standard SPECweb2005 benchmark. . This result confirms the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server as the highest performing and most efficient platform on the planet for the deployment of secure web services.

Benchmark Description

SPECweb2005 is the industry standard benchmark for evaluating Web server performance. The benchmark simulates multiple user sessions accessing a Web server and generating static and dynamic HTTP requests. The major features of SPECweb2005 are:

• Measures simultaneous user sessions
• Dynamic content: currently PHP and JSP implementations
• Page images requested using 2 parallel HTTP connections
• Multiple, standardized workloads: Banking (HTTPS), e-commerce (HTTP and HTTPS), and Support (HTTP)
• Simulates browser caching effects
• File accesses more accurately simulate today's disk access patterns

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• As captured in the table above, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server outperforms competitive x86 dual-and quad-socket servers equipped with the latest quad-core Intel Xeon and dual-core AMD Opteron processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server with a single UltraSPARC T2 processor obtained a world record result of 41,847 on the SPECweb2005 benchmark running the Solaris 10 OS and the Sun Java System Web Server 7.0, update 3. This world record benchmark result clearly demonstrates that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server can support tens of thousands of concurrent Web server sessions with users performing a variety of transactions, such as secure banking and merchandise ordering.
• The powerful combination of the unique 8-core / 64 thread UltraSPARC T2 processor, rocksolid Sun Java System Web Server and Solaris 10 OS makes the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server the highest performing and most efficient web serving platform available.
• The power efficiency of the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server was demonstrated by an average power consumption of only 617 watts during benchmark execution.
• If given a choice, the typical customer would prefer to use secure Web server technologies like SSL encryption and HTTPS at all times. However, that is extremely expensive and typically requires doubling the amount of hardware deployed at the ISP sites. Consequently, due to cost and complexity concerns, SSL encryption is only used for the most critical functions. The integrated cryptographic accelerators in the UltraSPARC T2 processor and security software features available in the Solaris 10 OS practically eliminate the performance and cost penalties of traditional secure Web services. For the first time, customers can use SSL-enabled Web services for all of their everyday needs.
• The SWaP metric is a measure of server efficiency and represented as a ratio that includes system performance, power and space consumption on a specific benchmark. It can be calculated as follows: SWaP = Perf /[ Space (RU) x Watts ]
• When compared to the SPECweb2005 result of 40,046 posted by the HP Proliant DL580 G5 server equipped with four quad-core Intel Xeon 7350 processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the single processor Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivers over 4% higher throughput while consuming 1.8x less power in 2x less space. As a result Sun's CoolThreads server delivers 80% higher performance per watt and 3.6x better SWaP.
• When compared to the SPECweb2005 result of 29,591 posted by the HP Proliant DL380 G5 server equipped with two quad-core Intel Xeon 5460 processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivers 41% greater throughput in same physical footprint. As a result Sun's CoolThreads server has 1.6x better performance per watt and 1.6x better SWaP.
• When compared to the SPECweb2005 result of 22,254 posted by the HP Proliant DL585 G2 equipped with four dual-core AMD Opteron processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivers 88% better throughput while consuming 1.4x less power and consuming 2x less space. As a result Sun's CoolThreads server delivers 2.5x higher performance per watt and 5x SWaP.
• When compared to the SPECweb2005 result of 23,716 posted by IBM System x3650 serverequipped with two quad-core Intel Xeon 5355 processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivers 76.5% better throughput in same physical footprint. As a result Sun's CoolThreads server has 1.7x higher performance per watt and 1.7x SWaP.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server configured with a single UltraSPARC T2 processor running the SugarCRM Community Edition 4.5.1i on the Solaris 10 OS supports 900 concurrent users while maintaining less than 2 second response times for more than 90% of web requests submitted.

Benchmark Description

SugarCRM Community Edition 4.5.1i is a popular open source CRM application that runs on the AMP stack consisting of Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP scripting language. SugarCRM has close to 1200 customers and the community is growing rapidly. The benchmark is based on the standard kit obtained from SugarCRM and uses JMeter software to drive the load. The benchmark simulates several types of users accessing the server. Users interactions can be categorized as browsing/reading or making changes to the database.

Benchmark Outcome

• The benchmark results clearly demonstrate that Sun's CoolThreads server can scale to a large number of concurrent CRM users on a single physical server running both the SugarCRM and MySQL database.
• The actual software stack that was used for the testing included the Solaris 10 OS, SugarCRM Community Edition 4.5.1i and the CoolStack1.2 (MySQL 5.0.45 database, Apache 2.2.6 web server, PHP 5.2.4 server-side HTML embedded scripting language), as well as OpenOffice.
• At the maximum load of 900 concurrent CRM users, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server utilized only about 15% of the available network bandwidth with plenty of CPU cycles still available. Additionally, very little performance impact was observed when the MySQL database instance was run inside Solaris 10 Containers versus running alongside SugarCRM in the unpartitioned OS space.
• This outstanding result confirms the ability of Sun's servers with CoolThreads to efficiently run applications based on AMP software stack, specifically SugarCRM and MySQL database, on top of the Solaris 10 OS. By combining multiple benchmark elements on a single physical server this test utilizes Containers, an advanced feature of Solaris 10 OS, and establishes Sun's CoolThreads servers as a leading choice for data center consolidation efforts.

• Benchmark Results

The Sun SPARC Enterprise 5220 Server, based on the innovative UltraSPARC T2 processor, achieved the highest ever single-chip integer throughput result on SPEC CPU2006 benchmark, while outperforming IBM systems based on the fastest 4.7GHz POWER6 processor by up to 37% and beating the best published results for Intel Xeon-based systems by up to 14%.

Benchmark Description

SPEC CPU2006 is a CPU-intensive benchmark suite, stressing a system's processor, memory subsystem and compiler. SPEC designed CPU2006 to provide a comparative measure of compute-intensive performance across the widest practical range of hardware.

The gccfs compiler allows one to use the optimal Sun SPARC optimization tools along with the popular gcc coding conventions and deliver performance that has not been possible before without time-consuming cod changes.

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, equipped with the 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor, achieved world record integer throughput performance on the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark.
• On the integer-intensive tests, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivered 37% higher performance than the 4.7GHz dual core POWER6-based IBM System p570 server and 14% more performance than the 3GHz quad-core Intel Xeon-based HP Proliant DL360 G5 server.
• These results demonstrate that the UltraSPARC T2 processor provides more computing capacity than any other chip on the market.
• Operating system (OS) and compiler software often help to deliver the best performance by providing optimizations tailored to a specific hardware platform or microprocessor architecture. The advanced features of freely available Sun Studio 12 compiler software allowed the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server to successfully claim the top spot on the industry-standard SPECcpu_rate2006 benchmark suite.

The benchmark demonstrates that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers provide the highest performing and the most cost-effective business solution for Siebel CRM applications. This is achieved through a powerful combination of Oracle's Siebel CRM Release 8.0 architecture with Oracle 10g R2 database running on a 8-core / 64 threads UltraSPARC T2 processor, Sun Java System Web Server, and the industry leading, free and open Solaris 10 OS.

• All tiers of the Siebel CRM Release 8.0 architecture ran on the UltraSPARC T2 chip multithreading (CMT) processor with Solaris 10 8/07. The Multithreading capability of the UltraSPARC T2 processor allowed each of the active Object Manager (OM) processes to run hundreds of Light Weight Processes (LWP), thus utilizing the available resources very effectively. A total number of 30 object managers serviced the work load of 10,000 concurrent users.
• Scalability — The Solaris 10 OS and CMT based servers proves once again to be the best combination for scalability and resource utilization in the datacenter, giving users a consistent response time and future growth on critical applications.
• Low network utilization — The Siebel CRM Release 8.0 Smart Web Architecture and Smart Network Architecture efficiently managed the network, consuming only 7.17 kilobits per second per user.
• Efficient use of the database server — Siebel CRM Release 8.0 Smart Database Connection Pooling and Multiplexing allowed the database to service 10,000 concurrent users and the supporting Siebel CRM Release 8.0 server application services with only 357 database connections using a Siebel database pooling ratio of 25:1.
• Energy efficiency — While supporting 10,000 concurrent Siebel users, the entire Sun Solution based on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 servers running Siebel CRM Release 8.0 and Oracle 10g R2 on top of Solaris 10 consumed 1202 watts in a 6U rack space. As a result the T5210/T5220 supports 8.3 users per watt of energy consumed and supports 1666 users per rack unit.

• Click here for a full copy of the benchmark report

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server running the Solaris 10 OS and Oracle Application Server outperformed all other competitive servers in the 2-Node SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark, including systems based on the latest IBM Power6, Intel Xeon and Intel Itanium 2 processors. In addition, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivered the highest overall Performance per Watt and the best per-socket performance in Java application serving.

The database tier of the benchmark was powered by a Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server running Oracle Database 10g on Solaris 10. The result achieved in the database tier are also world records.

These results confirm the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5x20 servers as the highest performing and most efficient platforms on the planet for deployment of secure application and OLTP database services.

Benchmark Description

SPECjAppServer2004 is the only industry-standard benchmark used for Java Enterprise Edition application servers. It measures the volume of transactions a particular system configuration can deliver while maintaining acceptable response times for 90% of the transactions.

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server obtained a world record 2,000.92 Java Operations per Second (JOPS) with 1 x 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor running Solaris 10 and the Oracle Application Server 10g on the SPECjAppServer2004 Standard Category.
• A Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 configured with 1 x 1.2GHz UltraSPARC T2 server running Oracle Database 10g supported the database tier of the benchmark.
• Compared to the IBM p570, equipped with two of the latest dual core 4.7GHz Power6 processors and running AIX 5.3, the single processor Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers nearly 1.7x higher throughput, while consuming over 2x less power and 2x less space. As a result the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 3.7x higher Performance per Watt and nearly 7.5x SWaP (server efficiency)
• Compared to the Dell PowerEdge 2900, equipped with two of the latest dual core 3GHz Intel Xeon 5100 "WoodCrest" processors and running Windows Server 2003, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers over 3x higher throughput in 2.5x less space. As a result the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 2.3x higher Performance per Watt and nearly nearly 6x SWaP (server efficiency)
• Compared to the HP Integrity rx2660, equipped with two of the latest dual core Intel Itanium 2 processors and running HP-UX, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 2.3x higher throughput, while consuming 1.2x less power. As a result the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 2.7x higher Performance per Watt and SWaP (server efficiency)

The Sun SPARC Enterprise 5220 Server, based on the innovative UltraSPARC T2 processor, achieved world record integer and floating point performance throughput with the highest ever per-chip results on the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark , outperforming the latest 4.7GHz POWER6 processor from IBM by up to 29% and the latest quad core Intel Xeon x5365 3GHz processor by up to 61%

Benchmark Description

CPU-intensive benchmark suite, stressing a system's processor, memory subsystem and compiler. SPEC designed CPU2006 to provide a comparative measure of compute-intensive performance across the widest practical range of hardware

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• These results demonstrate that the UltraSPARC T2 processor provides more computing capacity than any other chip on the market.
• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server, equipped with the 1.4GHz UltraSPARC T2 processor achieved world record Integer and Floating Point throughput performance on the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark.
• On the Integer tests, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivered 29% higher performance than the 4.7GHz dual core POWER6-based IBM System p570 server and 28% more performance that the 3GHz quad-core Intel Xeon-based HP Proliant DL360 G5 server.
• On the Floating Point tests, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server delivered 7% higher performance than the 4.7GHz dual core IBM POWER6-based IBM System p570 server and 61% more performance that the 3GHz quad core Intel Xeon-based HP Proliant DL360 G5 server.
• These results demonstrate that the UltraSPARC T2 processor provides more computing capacity than any other chip on the market.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise 5220, running Solaris 10 OS, provides the most efficient Domino mail serving environment available with the lowest cost per user, beating Xeon and Power 5+ based systems from IBM that were running SuSE Linux and AIX OS, respectively.

Benchmark Description

Simulates active users accessing their Domino R6iNotes mail files via a standard Web browser. The R6iNotes workload is HTTP-based and uses the Lotus Domino Mail server.

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server obtained a world record result for single socket systems of 43,000 users, and with a price per user of just $2.89. This world record result clearly demonstrates that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 can support thousands of concurrent mail server sessions running IBM Lotus Domino.
• The price / performance delivered by the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server is superior to all HP and IBM systems on this benchmark.
• Compared to the IBM x3650, equipped with two dual core Intel Xeon 5100 Series "WoodCrest" processors and running SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, the single processor Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 4x higher throughput per socket, with over 5x faster response time. The T5220 delivers over 2x higher Performance per Watt and SWaP (server efficiency), at 20% better Price per User.
• Compared to the IBM p5+ 560Q, configured with four of the latest quad core Power 5+ processors and running AIX 5.3, the single processor Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers over 3x higher throughput on a per socket basis, and 1.4x faster response time. While the IBM system supported 21% higher total throughput per system, it required nearly 4x more power and 4x more space than the T5220, and costs 69% more per user. The T5220 leads in efficiency with 3x higher performance per watt and 12x SWaP (server efficiency).

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server running Solaris 10 and the Sun Java System Web Server set a new world record in performance and performance per watt on the industry standard measure of web server performance. The T5220 outperformed competitive servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and equipped with the latest Intel quad core and AMD dual core processors. These results confirm the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server as the highest performing and most efficient platform on the planet for deployment of secure web services.

Benchmark Description

• Measures simultaneous user sessions
• Dynamic content: currently PHP and JSP implementations
• Page images requested using 2 parallel HTTP connections
• Multiple, standardized workloads: Banking (HTTPS), E-commerce (HTTP and HTTPS), and Support (HTTP)
• Simulates browser caching effects
• File accesses more accurately simulate today's disk access patterns

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server obtained a world record 37,001 SPECweb2005 users with 1 x UltraSPARC T2 processor running Solaris 10 and the Sun Java System Web Server. This world record benchmark clearly demonstrates that the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 can support thousands of concurrent web server sessions while allowing larger and more complex Java applications to be run in-process for better performance and scalability. The powerful combination of unique 8-core / 64 threads UltraSPARC T2 processor, rock-solid Sun Java System Web Server and industry-leading Solaris 10 OS, provides the highest performing and most efficient web serving environment available.
• Customers prefer to use secured web server technology by default. However this typically means doubling the amount of hardware deployed. Consequently, due to cost concerns, customers only use SSL for the most critical functions. The integrated cryptographic accelerators in the UltraSPARC T2 processor and security software features available under Solaris 10 OS, practically eliminate the performance penalty of secured web services. Customers can, for the first time, use SSL-enabled web services for all of their needs.
• Compared to the HP Proliant DL580 G5, equipped with four of the latest quad-core Intel Xeon 7300 Series 2.93GHz "Tigerton" processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the single processor Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 22% higher throughput, and consumes nearly 1.8x less power and 2x less space. As a result the T5220 delivers over 2X higher Performance per Watt and 4.3x higher SWaP (server efficiency).
• Compared to the HP Proliant DL380 G5, equipped with two of the latest quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 Series "Clovertown" processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 1.8x higher throughput, in equivalent levels of power and space. As a result the T5220 delivers 1.7X higher Performance per Watt and SWaP (server efficiency).
• Compared to the HP Proliant DL585 G2, equipped with four dual core AMD Opteron processors and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers over 1.65x higher throughput, in 1.4x less power and 2x space. As a result the T5220 delivers 2.3X higher Performance per Watt and 4.6 x SWaP (server efficiency).

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server running Solaris 10 delivered the highest ever single socket server results on the industry standard measure of JVM performance This was also the highest result achieved by comparable UNIX servers, outperforming the latest Power6 system from IBM and Itanium 2 system from HP, all while consuming less space and power.

Benchmark Description

SPECjbb2005 (Java Business Benchmark) measures the performance of a Java implemented application tier (server-side Java). The benchmark is based on the order processing of a wholesale supplier application. The metrics given are number of SPECjbb2005 bops (Business Operations per Second) and SPECjbb2005 bops/JVM (bops per JVM instance).

Benchmark Outcome [1]

• The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server obtained a single socket world record result of 192,055 Business Operations per Second.
• Compared to the IBM p570, equipped with four of the latest dual core 4.7GHz Power6 processors and running AIX 5.3, the single processor Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 9% higher throughput, while consuming over 2x less power and 2x less space. As a result the T5220 delivers nearly 2.5X higher Performance per Watt and nearly 5x SWaP (server efficiency).
• Compared to a 4-way IBM p505Q, equipped with the latest quad core Power 5+ processor and running AIX 5.3, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers 3x higher throughput and over 2X higher Performance per Watt.
• Compared to the HP Integrity rx2660, equipped with the latest dual core Itanium 2 processors and running HP-UX, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 delivers nearly 2.5x higher throughput while consuming 1.2x less power. As a result the T5220 delivers nearly nearly 3X higher Performance per Watt and SWaP (server efficiency).
• The Sun HotSpot JVM sets a new standard for scalability by demonstrating near linear scalability and fully leveraging the 64 hardware threads of the UltraSPARC T2 processor, and running up to 8x more threads than the competition.