Assessing IBM's POWER8, Part 2: Server Applications on OpenPOWER
by Johan De Gelas on September 15, 2016 8:01 AM ESTCPU Choices
For this article, the only current-generation Intel Broadwell-EP processors we had in the lab were the Xeon E5-2699 v4 and Xeon E5-2650 v4. Comparing the IBM POWER8 with the former was not fair: the Xeon costs almost 3 times ($4115) more than the midrange POWER8 chip ($1500). The latter was not an option either with a TDP of 90W. There are no Intel chips with 190W TDP, so we had to compromise.
The most comparable CPU that was available to us was the Xeon E5-2690 v3. It is a higher end midrange Intel SKU (135W TDP) that came out around the same time as the POWER8. If the 190W TDP POWER8 cannot beat this 135W TDP chip, IBM's micro architects have not done a very good job. Don't let the 2.6 GHz label fool you: this Haswell Xeon can boost to 3.1 GHz when all cores are active and to 3.5 GHz in a single thread situation. So it does have 2 cores extra and similar clockspeeds.
However we can't ignore the current-generation Broadwell-EP entirely. To get a better idea how the midrange POWER8 compares to the latest Xeons, we had to add another midrange Xeon E5 v4 SKU. So we only enabled 14 of the 22-cores of the Xeon E5-2699 v4. This gives us a chip that is somewhere between the Xeon E5-2660 v4 (14 cores at 2 GHz) and E5-2680 v4 (14 cores at 2.4 GHz). Well, at least on paper. The Xeon E5-2680 v4 runs most of the time at 2.9 GHz in heavily multi-threaded situations (+5 steps, all cores active), while our Xeon E5-2699 v4 with 14 cores runs at 2.8 GHz (+6 turbo steps). As the TDP of the latter is higher, the turbo clock will be used for a higher percentage of the time. Bottom line, our Xeon E5-2699 v4 with 14 cores is very similar to an E5-2680 v4 with a 145 W TDP. As the Xeon E5-2680 costs around $1745, it is in the right price range. From a price/performance point of perspective that is as fair as we can get it.
For those looking to get the best performance per watt: we'll save you some time and tell you that it does not get any better than the Xeon E5-2600 v4 series. Intel really went all the way to make sure that the Broadwell EP Xeon is a power sipper. And although the performance step is small, the Xeon E5-2600 v4 consumes much less than a similar Xeon E5 v3 SKU, let alone a CPU with a 190W TDP (+ 60-80W memory buffers).
Benchmark Configuration and Methodology
Our testing was conducted on Ubuntu Server 15.10 (kernel 4.2.0) with gcc compiler version 5.2.1. The reason why we did not update was that we only got everything working with that version.
Last but not least, we want to note how the performance graphs have been color-coded. Orange is for used for the review POWER8 CPU. The latest generation of the Intel Xeon (v4) gets dark blue, the previous one (v3) gets light blue. Older Xeon generations are colored with the default gray.
IBM S812LC (2U)
The IBM S812LC is based up on Tyan's "Habanero" platform. The board inside the IBM server is thus designed by Tyan.
| CPU | One IBM POWER8 2.92 GHz (up to 3.5 GHz Turbo) |
| RAM | 256 GB (16x16GB) DDR3-1333 |
| Internal Disks | 2x Samsung 850Pro 960 GB |
| Motherboard | Tyan SP012 |
| PSU | Delta Electronics DSP-1200AB 1200W |
Intel's Xeon E5 Server – S2600WT (2U Chassis)
| CPU | One Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v4 (2.2 GHz, 22c, 55MB L3, 145W) One "simulated" Intel Xeon processor E5-2680 v4 (2.2 GHz, 14c, 35MB L3, 145W) One Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v3 (2.3 GHz, 18c, 45MB L3, 145W) One Intel Xeon processor E5-2690 v3 (3.2 GHz, 8c, 20MB L3, 135W) |
| RAM | 128 GB (8x16GB) Kingston DDR4-2400 or 256 GB (8x 32GB) Hynix DDR4-2133 |
| Internal Disks | 2x Samsung 850Pro 960 GB |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board Wildcat Pass |
| PSU | Delta Electronics 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
All C-states are enabled in the BIOS.
SuperMicro 6027R-73DARF (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2697 v2 (2.7GHz, 12c, 30MB L3, 130W) |
| RAM | 128GB (8x16GB) Samsung at 1866 MHz |
| Internal Disks | 2x Intel SSD3500 400GB |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro X9DRD-7LN4F |
| PSU | Supermicro 740W PWS-741P-1R (80+ Platinum) |
All C-states are enabled in the BIOS.
Other Notes
Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) power line. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs.
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PowerOfFacts - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link
trollBOMBOVA - Friday, October 7, 2016 - link
Rich info , good scoutPowerOfFacts - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link
Sigh ....PowerOfFacts - Friday, September 16, 2016 - link
That's strange, this site says you can buy a POWER8 server for $4800. https://www.ibm.com/marketplace/cloud/big-data-inf...Screwed up Power (so many times)? Please explain? Compared to what....SPARC? Itanium? If you are talking about those platforms, POWER has 70% of that marketshare. Do you mean against "Good Enough" Intel? Absolutely Intel is the market leader but only in share as it isn't in innovation. Power still delivers enterprise features for AIX and IBM i customers with features Intel could only dream about. Where the future of the data center is going with Linux, well it did take IBM a while to figure out they couldn't do it their way. Now, they are committed 100% (from my perspective as a non-IBMer while also being committed to AIX & IBM i as their is a solid install base there) which we all see in the form of IBM & even non-IBM solutions built by OpenPOWER partners and ISV solutions using little endian Linux. Yes, there are some workloads that require extra work to optimize but for those already optimized or those which can be optimized, those customers can now buy a server for less money that has the potential to outperform Intel by up to 2X, in a system using innovative technology (CAPI & NVLink) that is more reliable. I don't know, IBM may be late and Power has some work to do but I really don't think you can back up your statement that "IBM has screwed up power so many times". Latest OpenPOWER Summit was a huge success. Here is a Google interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0qTLlvUB-s&fe...
Oh, but you were probably just trying to be clever and take a few competitive shots.
CajunArson - Saturday, September 17, 2016 - link
Yeah, that $4800 Power server wasn't nearly equivalent to what was benchmarked in this review with the "midrange" server that costs over $11K on the same web page you cited.I could build an 8 or 12 core Xeon that would put the hurt on that low-end Power box for less money and continue to save money during every minute of operation.
JohanAnandtech - Saturday, September 17, 2016 - link
" it will cost anywhere from 5-10X" . What do you base this on? Several SKUs of IBM are in the $1500 range. "Something like $10K for the processor". This seems to be about the high-end. The E7s are in the $4.6-7k range. Even if IBM would charge $10k for the high end CPUs, it is nowhere near being 5x more expensive. Unless I am missing something, you seem to have missed that IBM has a scale out range and is offering much more affordable OpenPOWER CPUs.jesperfrimann - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link
IMHO, the place where POWER servers make sense right now, is for use with IBM software. So if you are using something DB2 or WebSphere, where the real cost is the Software licenses.Then it's really a Nobrainer. Not that your local IBM sales Guy will like that you'll do a switch to a Linux@Power solution :)
// Jesper
YukaKun - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
For the Java tests, did you change the GC collector settings? Also, why only 24GB for the JVM? I run JBoss with 32GB across our servers. I'd use more, but they still have issues with going to higher levels.Cheers!
madwolfa - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
Unless working with huge datasets you want to keep your JVM heap size as reasonably low as possible... otherwise there would be a penalty on GC performance. Granted, with this sort of hardware it would be pretty minuscule, but the general rule of thumb still applies...JohanAnandtech - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - link
No changes to the GC Collector settings. 24 GB for VM = 4x 24 GB + 4x 3 GB for Transaction Injector and 2 GB for the controllor = +/- 110 GB memory. We wanted to run it inside 128 GB as most of our DIMMs are 16 GB at DDR4-2400/2133.