Sun Fire X2100 M2 Server

The Sun Fire X2100 M2 server, equipped with next-generation AMD Opteron Model 1218 Series processors, demonstrated outstanding performance on the SPEC CPU2000 benchmark, including a World Record floating point throughput result for all single socket x86 systems. This result supersedes the competitive scores posted by the systems based on the latest Intel Core 2 processors (aka "Woodcrest" and "Conroe"). SPEC CPU2000 is an industry-standard benchmark, which measures CPU and memory intensive computing tasks. It is made up of two benchmark suites focused on integer and floating point performance.

The Sun Fire X2100 M2 server achieved a SPECfp_rate2000 result of 56.5, using now freely available Sun Studio 11 compiler software running on the industry's most advanced OS - Solaris 10 Operating System.

• Benchmark Results

The Sun Fire X2100 M2 server, equipped with a Next-Generation AMD Opteron Model 1218 processor, continues to demonstrates the advantages of running scalable compute intensive workloads on a low cost platform, and is perfectly suited for developing OpenMP applications typically executed on much larger SMP systems. The industry standard SPEC OMP benchmark is used to compare the performance of shared memory servers executing compute-intensive scientific applications, which are based on OpenMP framework, and consist of medium and large problem sets. The winning combination included Sun Fire X2100 M2 server, Solaris 10 OS and Sun Studio 11 software, and allowed Sun to surpass the competition on the medium size problem set by posting 1chip/2core/2thread SPECompM2001 score of 6837. Additionally, this result demonstrates a 35% improvement when compared to the previous generation Sun Fire X2100 2-way server's result of 5050.

• Benchmark Results

The 32-node cluster of Sun Fire X2100 servers, powered by the highest-performing single-core AMD Opteron Model 156 processor, set a world record on LS-DYNA crash simulation code, which is used in the automotive industries worldwide and consists of two standardized benchmark problems: "Neon_Refined" and a much larger "3 Vehicle Collision." Sun is the first vendor to publish results on a system that is based on streamlined, high-performance, single-socket servers used as quintessential cost-effective building blocks, which were running 64-bit >SuSE Linux (SLES9) and interconnected using Cisco InfiniBand technology. Sun's system surpassed all published results, ranging from one to 32 processors, that were posted on Topcrunch.org web site by various hardware vendors, while maintaining superb scalability with the increasing size of the cluster.

The scalability of these codes is non-linear as the size of the cluster is growing, with the typical sweet spot of 16 processors, where Sun's solution maintained 80% efficiency:

• Benchmark Results

Fluent is among the most popular MCAE applications that are heavily used in the automotive, aerospace and consumer products industries. The software solves fluid flow problems and is based on a numerical technique called computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

The FLUENT Version 6.2.16 benchmarking suite has a set of problems from nine industrial CFD applications that are selected to demonstrate the performance of FLUENT on a variety of hardware platforms. The problems are divided into three varying in size classes: Small, Medium and Large. Vendors benchmark their systems with the principal objective of providing comparative performance information for FLUENT software that, among other things, depends on compilers, optimization and interconnect, in addition to the performance characteristics of the hardware. Running 64-bit SuSE Linux (SLES9), the 32-node cluster of Sun Fire X2100 servers, powered by the highest-performing single-core AMD Opteron Model 156 processor and interconnected using Cisco InfiniBand technology, has the best performance across all three classes, as reported on Fluent web site.

On a same-sized cluster, Sun's solution performs better than the IBM BladeCenter system, based on LS20 blades equipped with AMD Opteron processors and Myrinet low latency interconnect. When compared to the systems based on Intel Xeon EM64T processors, the high-performance, single-socket servers from Sun are swifter than the IBM eServer x336-based solution, beat the HP ProLiant DL 360-based cluster, and trump Dell's offering, which is based on PowerEdge 1855 servers.

• Benchmark Results

The Sun Fire X2100 server is the fastest single socket x86 system with a SPECfp2000 score of 2334. The combination of AMD Opteron(TM) Model 156 CPU, Solaris 10 OS and Sun(TM) Studio 11 software generated this new world record on SPEC CPU 2000 benchmark, which highlights the floating point capabilities of the processor, memory and compiler on the system under test. The Sun Fire X2100 server is over 15% faster than the IBM eServer xSeries 306m server, which uses Intel Pentium CPU and posted SPECfp_2000 score of 2028.

The 16-processor cluster based on Sun Fire X2100 servers, each outfitted with a single AMD OpteronTM Model 152 processor and the Cisco Infiniband (IB) PCI-Express adapter, outperforms all results published by other hardware vendors on EXA PowerFLOW benchmark. EXA's PowerFLOW CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) application is an MCAE application used by the major engineering companies in a variety of disciplines such as aerospace, automotive and chemical. The EXA PowerFLOW benchmark consists of two compute and memory intensive suites with small and large data sets. In both cases, the cost-effective solution based on high-performance single-processor Sun Fire X2100 server, running 64-bit SuSE Linux, is superior to all other results by a significant margin, including Itanium2 and POWER5-based submissions, and sets a new World Record for clusters of this size. The cluster based on 16 Sun Fire X2100 servers is over 48% faster than HP DL140-based cluster with 16 Intel Xeon EM64T processors and IB interconnect. Additionally, Sun's solution is up to 24% faster then HP DL 145-based cluster equipped with 16 AMD Opteron processors and Myrinet interconnect.

The Sun Fire X2100 server, the ultimate low cost platform for developing and running scalable compute intensive applications, demonstrates the multi-core advantage of the AMD Opteron Model 175 processor in combination with the SolarisTM 10 Operating System and the advanced features of SunTM Studio 11 software. While this benchmark has been typically executed on SMP systems, Sun is breaking the traditional approach by offering SMP-equivalent capabilities in a budget-conscientious single-socket system, thus providing the best ROI for developers and paving the path to the larger multi-socket/multi-core systems, such as the Sun Fire X4100/X4200 servers. Furthermore, the SPECompM2001 result of 5,050 for the Sun Fire X2100 dual-core server scales virtually linear (1.99 times) when compared to the Sun Fire X4100 4-way server result of 10,076 that was achieved at the same clock frequency.

• Benchmark Results

The Sun Fire X2100 server set a new world record on the SPECjbb2005 benchmark, which is a follow on to the popular SPEC JBB2000 suite. SPECjbb2005 provides a new, enhanced workload, implemented in a more object-oriented manner to reflect how real-world applications are designed and introduces new features to make the benchmark a more realistic reflection of today's applications. The Sun Fire X2100 server posted the single processor world-record result of 16,070 business operations per second (bops) using the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). Since the benchmark stresses the implementation of the Java Virtual Machine, as well as the performance of the OS, it was used to demonstrate that Java HotSpot Server Virtual Machine can deliver outstanding results and optimized performance regardless of the underlying OS. An identical server configuration was used to conduct two more SPECjbb2005 tests using the same version of the virtual machine. The first test was run under MS Windows 2003 Server OS and produced the score of 16,053 bops and the second test used SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 OS and got the score of 15,434 bops. Java HotSpot once again proved to be a stellar performer, when used in combination with top-performing x64 servers from Sun.

• Solaris Benchmark Results

• Windows Benchmark Results

• Linux Benchmark Results

• Press Release