New Benchmark World Records Set by Oracle Sun’s New SPARCT5 Server
July 2013
New Sun SPARC T5 servers set 17 world records and are the world’s best platforms for enterprise computing at any scale. The SPARC T5-8 system beat IBM Power 770 and 780 systems in recent benchmarks and is currently the fastest single server for Oracle Database, Java, and middleware in the world.
Building on the success of its SPARC T4 servers, Oracle has now completely refreshed its SPARC server family and the response by analysts and the press has been overwhelmingly positive. Still, some inaccurate comments from IBM have surfaced in the press, so Oracle would like to set the record straight.
Facts
Fact #1: 94% of our 17 world-record benchmarks were audited, and 12 of them are SPEC, TPC, or SAP benchmarks. The other four were audited and approved by the application owner. IBM submitted and proudly displayed results for two of these, which were audited and approved in the same fashion.
Fact #2: All of Oracle’s benchmark performance comparisons can be found at http://oracle.com/benchmarks, where we detail performance, price/performance, and other leadership attributes.
Fact #3: Based on IBM’s own performance sizing calculations, IBM achieved on average only a 10% performance gain from Power7 to Power7+. This is a very poor performance increase in IBM processor generation in 2-3 years
Fact #4: While IBM has three security accelerator units per chip, they do not show any measured performance results. Oracle has 16 per chip and shows extremely high performance.
Fact #5: In a few cases IBM had better performance per core, but this did not reduce the total software and hardware cost to the customer, nor did it provide better price/performance. What customers care about is performance per dollar, not per core.
Fact #6: SAP does not charge per-core but per-user, so IBM’s per-core SAP comparisons are pointless.
Fact #7: In some benchmarks Oracle configured servers with more memory than IBM, but Oracle also did this at better price/performance than IBM.
Oracle’s SPARC T5 Advantage Over IBM
Oracle’s advantage is the result of its focus on engineering hardware and software to work together. Our SPARC T5 systems can execute an enormous range of applications that leapfrog the competition with up to a 10x performance improvement over the previous generation. As Oracle continues to execute on its strategy to more deeply integrate its hardware with software, our real-world performance gains will continue to surpass IBM. -Braden Stewart, Greentec Systems
