The Intel Xeon E5 v4 Review: Testing Broadwell-EP With Demanding Server Workloads
by Johan De Gelas on March 31, 2016 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Enterprise
- Enterprise CPUs
- Broadwell
MySQL 5.7.0
Thanks to the excellent repository of Percona, we were able to vastly improve our MySQL benchmark with Sysbench. However due to these changes, you cannot compare this with any similar Sysbench based benchmarking we have done before.
In updating our SQL benchmarking, we first upgraded the standard mysql installation to the better performing Percona Server 5.7. Secondly, we used sysbench 0.5 (instead of 0.4) and we implemented the (lua) scripts that allow us to use multiple tables (8 in our case) instead of the default one. This makes the Sysbench benchmark much more realistic as running with one table creates a very artificial bottleneck.
For our testing we used the read-only OLTP benchmark, which is slightly less realistic, but still much more interesting than most other Sysbench tests. This allows us to measure CPU performance without creating an I/O bottleneck. Our humble S3500 SSDs were fast enough in this scenario.
We used to apply all kinds of hacks to get around the limited scalability of both mysql and the way sysbench tested. Any version older than 5.5 could hardly scale beyond 8 cores. It is still not perfect, but MySQL uses the first 22 cores and 44 threads of the Xeon E5-2699 v4 amazingly well. We only get a 24% performance increase if we double the core count again with a second CPU, but we are honestly surprised that MySQL can now make good use of those 88 threads. Thanks to our better testing methods and a more scalable mysql, we can now report that the latest Xeon is capable of doubling the performance of the best Xeon that was launched 4 years ago. Well done Oracle, Percona, and Intel!
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patrickjp93 - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Knight's Landing: 730 mm^2, also on the 14nm platformextide - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Is it really that big..? Wow, I knew it was big, but didn't know it was that big. Got a source on that?Kevin G - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link
I'll second a link for a source. I knew it'd be big but that big?extide - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
I know you meant Reticle, but that was a pretty funny typo, heh.Kevin G - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link
Autocorrect has gotten the best of me yet again.extide - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
And, I know how big GM200 and Fiji are, but I am talking about big GPU's on 14/16nm. All signs are currently pointing to <300mm^2 for the first round of 14/16nm GPU's.lorribot - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
Given the way Microsoft and others are now licensing by the core and in large non splitable packages (Windows 2016 Datacenter is in blocks of 16 cores, a dual socket server with 44 cores would need 48 core licences) the increasing core count has limited appeal over small numbers of faster cores when looking at virtualised environments.Those still in the physical world will still have to pay per core but may have to buy 4 std Windows licenses.
when it comes to doing your testing, it should reflect these costs and compare total bang per buck when dealing with performance.
Red Hat still licences per socket but don't be surprised if they go per core too.
JohanAnandtech - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Back in 2008, I had a sales person explaining the license models of Microsoft to me in our lab. From that point on, we have invested most of our time and resources in linux server software. :-Dextide - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Enterprise linux isn't free, either ya knowrahvin - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Support isn't free on the FOSS side but the software is. Redhat is never going to charge more per "cores" for support, that's ridiculous and would result in rivals stealing their support contracts. If licensing costs are that bad that you are dumping hardware you really should be looking at moving services to Linux and Visualizing the windows servers so you can limit the core count and provide more horsepower.Anyone putting Microsoft on bare hardware these days is nuts. Although the consolation is that they get to pay MS's exorbitant tax on software. Linux should be the core component of any IT services and virtualized servers where you need proprietary server software.