Scale-Out Big Data Benchmark: ElasticSearch

ElasticSearch is an open source, full text search engine that can be run on a cluster relatively easy. It's basically like an open source version of Google Search that can be deployed in an enterprise. It should be one of the poster children of scale-out software and is one of the representatives of the so called "Big Data" technologies. Thanks to Kirth Lammens, one of the talented researchers at my lab, we have developed a benchmark that searches through all the Wikipedia content (+/- 40GB). Elasticsearch is – like many Big Data technologies – built on Java (we use the 64-bit server version 1.7.0).

Elastic Search

The term "Big data" almost immediately suggests that you need massive machines, more like the new Xeon E7 which supports up to 6 TB. In reality, many big data analyses are running on top of very humble machines in a cluster. ElasticSearch is such an an application: the underlying Java technology does not work well with a larger than 32 GB heap. A total of 64 GB RAM is considered as the sweet spot, to leave some RAM space for filesystem caching. 

The result of the Xeon D is stunning. The Xeon D is no less than 70% faster than the fastest Xeon E3s. Better performance is possible with the Xeon E5, but the price tag of those servers is not comparable to the Xeon D servers. The Xeon D-1540 (and as a result the SYS-5028D-TN4T) is the performance per dollar champ here. 

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  • extide - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link

    So, I was thinking last night, that this chip is THE PERFECT enthusiast chip! All Intel needs to do is release an unlocked and socketed version (although that would be complex because there is currently no platform for it ...) although if we could get at least an unlocked version on an enthusiast style board it would be awesome.

    Think about it:
    8 Broadwell cores -- Great!
    12MB L3 -- Great!
    24 Lanes PCIe 3.0 -- More than 16 or even skylakes rumored 20, pretty good. You could do things like 16x + 8x, or 8x + 8x + 4x + 4x (the two 4x being m.2 ssd's) which would support CF or SLI quite well and some fast ssd's.
    2ch DDR4 -- plenty for gaming and most enthusiast applications
    Dual 10GbE -- Just added Gravvy here, but would def help adoption of 10g in the enthusiast realm.

    COME ON INTEL!!
  • extide - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link

    Also, I forgot to add:

    This would be a great intermediate between the current regular consumer stuff (LGA 115x) and HPDE (LGA 2011x) -- A lot of people really see the LGA 2011 platform as overkill, even for enthusiasts, and it gets so expensive, with quad channel ddr4 and all that. This chip just seems to make so much sense. Now if intel priced it no more than the $500 mark, that would be awesome. Imagine, if AMD was more competitive, we might actually have that5 scenario.... Hopefully Zen is just great!
  • Namisecond - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link

    Intel's tray price for this chip is listed at $199 for the 4-core and $581 for the 8-core. The price for the CPU+motherboard is almost $1K for the 8 core. which indicates the problem is not in the price of the chip itself.

    If you want cheap and low power consumption, I'd direct you to the S1150 platform with Xeon E3 V3 "L" series (13-45W) processors.
  • spikebike - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link

    For a home machine, small server, workstation, or similar the Xeon D 1520 looks even better. Faster clock, 1/3rd the price, same maximum ram, ecc, etc. Sure it's got 4 cores/8threads instead of more, but for many use cases that's not a big limitation. In quite a few cases spending the $400 different on RAM or SSDs will make a bigger difference.
  • hifiaudio2 - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link

    Where can you get a 1520? Google searching is not finding anything for sale...
  • hifiaudio2 - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link

    If I cannot find the 1520 for sale, what is the best bang for the buck i3 and MB combo (want to use ECC ram as well) for a Media server/transcode/nas? Low TDP, etc..
  • jaziniho - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link

    Any word on whether HP plan to make a Moonshot cartridge featuring Xeon D? the 45W TDP seems to match up with some of the previous chips they have used.
  • jeffsci - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link

    Why do the results use a variety of OSS compilers? For an Intel Xeon processor, the Intel compilers are the most reliable. Is Open64 actively developed for Intel processors? And switching from GCC 4.8 to 4.9 with different flags...how is this even remotely scientific?
  • needforsuv - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link

    so they just done to the 'regular' 4/8 i7/e3 what they did to the C2D in making the C2Q but more sophisticated I like it now wheres that lga 115x 8 core
  • tabascosauz - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link

    I hope that Mr. de Gelas will continue to learn and improve as a writer, because the grammar in this article is, in numerous places, rather iffy and AT has traditionally excelled in delivering detailed, grammatically correct content.

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