Sun Fire V40z: Four Opterons in a 3U
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 22, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
The Test
Testing the Sun Fire V40z is not something that we can easily reference, since the server configurations that we have in our review portfolio are generally Windows based or in a dual configuration. Our quad processor database analysis from early last year goes into specific detail about database performance analysis, and Jason's Opteron 252 article from a week ago adds more depth to that data. Johan wrote a very thorough article detailing some of the differences between various database benchmarks, and we will be using some of his analysis procedure from the Sun Fire V20z benchmarked as well.To give a baseline performance in our benchmarks, we took some data from our Sun W2100z analysis.
| Test Configurations | ||
| Machine: | Sun W2100z | Sun Fire V40z |
| Processor(s): | (2) AMD Opteron 250 | (4) AMD Opteron 850 |
| RAM: | 4 x 1024MB PC-3200 | 8 x 1024MB PC-2700 |
| Hard Drives: | SCSI u320 Seagate Cheetah 10,000RPM | SCSI u320 Seagate Cheetah 10,000RPM |
| Memory Timings: | Default | |
| Operating System(s): | SuSE 9.1 Professional RedHat 9 JDS 2.0 |
RedHat 9 |
| Kernel: | Linux 2.6.8 Linux 2.4 (JDS 2.0) |
Linux 2.4.21 |
| Compiler: | linux:~ # gcc -v Reading specs from /usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.4.2/specs Configured with: ./configure Thread model: posix gcc version 3.4.2 |
|
We will put the majority of our emphasis on database benchmarks for this analysis because a quad Opteron server with 8GB of memory is typically an ideal platform for a database. Our rendering benchmarks are also important, but our compilation benchmarks represent the best real-world analysis in our testing.
The core of our benchmarks today run on Red Hat 9 (kernel 2.4.21), which is NUMA aware. Anand wrote a little introduction to NUMA almost two years ago during the Opteron launch, which should illustrate the importance of NUMA in our particular configuration. Some of our benchmarks won't need more than a few hundred megabytes of data and it becomes much more efficient to copy all of this data into the memory of each processor bank. All of our tests run on x86_64 kernels and environments. With the exception of Mental Ray and Shake, all binaries are 64-bit as well.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
View All Comments
RyanVM - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Did anybody else find it confusing that the reviewed system had CG-stepping Opteron 850s and Kris brought up E4-stepping Opteron 852s on multiple occasions? What CPUs were actually in the system?SUOrangeman - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Last page, .."Sun has a speed **daemon** on their hands, ..."
Freudian slip, hehe? Nice read nonetheless.
-SUO
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
MrEMan: Mediaplex is just an advertising server. Some advertisers (like NewEgg) host their banners on Mediaplex so they don't destroy their bandwidth. Sometimes when an ad campaign is hitting too many impressions the Mediaplex tag will revert to a 2x2 or a 1x1 pixel so that they don't harm their click through rates. It has nothing to do with spyware or malware or adware.Kristopher
MrEMan - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Anandtech,What is with the 1/16" x 1/16" graphic (1280x1024 resolution on a 19" CRT monitor) for adfarm.mediaplex.com ?
Is it there with your permission or did someone hack your site?
If it is there with your permission, I must say I am surprised that you would put such stealth adware garbage links on your site.
jcourtney - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
I'd love to see some benchmarks with Solaris instead of or vs. Linux for reference too. Nice read though as usual.ElFenix - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
"particularly considering the fact that the V40z does not utilize any active cooling directly on their CPU heat sinks"whoa, proper spelling of heat sink!
now i'm going to harp on the fact that blowing air across a radiator with a fan is not active cooling. air conditioning is active cooling, turning on the ceiling fan is not.
=)
nice read
Hikari - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
I wish I could see a comparison of this and that Quad Opteron HP server. I have the HP one budgeted for this year already... (we're also a Sun shop).I didn't see an option for 15k RPM drives though. I could put in like 5-146GB@15k RPM in the HP which was one reason I was leaning towards it.
lihoyin - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Looking forward for a comparsion with HP DL585 / DL 385, both are also Monsters!Sunner - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Googer, that's true, Sun basically just rebadges Newisys servers, the same is true of the V20Z, in fact IIRC you can actually find some Newisys marks left on the servers :)Anyway, Kris, any chance of a couple of benchmarks with a 2.6 based distro?
2.6 has, among other things, good NUMA support, something that would be nice to have when running a 4-way Opteron ;)
//Sunner
dougSF30 - Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - link
Another 250/850 typo on page 3: "Below, you can see one of the Opteron 250s is exposed from under the copper heat sink on the daughterboard."