The Intel Xeon E7 v2 Review: Quad Socket, Up to 60 Cores/120 Threads
by Johan De Gelas on February 21, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Xeon
- Ivy Bridge EX
- server
- Brickland
SAP S&D Benchmark
The SAP SD (Sales and Distribution, 2-Tier Internet Configuration) benchmark is an interesting benchmark as it is a real-world client-server application. It is one of those rare industry benchmarks that actually means something to the real IT professionals. Even better, the SAP ERP software is a prime example of where these Xeon E7 v2 chips will be used. We looked at SAP's benchmark database for these results.
Most of the results below all run on Windows 2008/2012 and MS SQL Server (both 64-bit). Every 2-Tier Sales & Distribution benchmark was performed with SAP's latest ERP 6 Enhancement Package 4. These results are not comparable with any benchmark performed before 2009. We analyzed the SAP Benchmark in-depth in one of our earlier articles. The profile of the benchmark has remained the same:
- Very parallel resulting in excellent scaling
- Low to medium IPC, mostly due to "branchy" code
- Somewhat limited by memory bandwidth
- Likes large caches (memory latency)
- Very sensitive to sync ("cache coherency") latency
Let's see how the quad Xeon compares to the previous Intel generation, the cheaper dual socket systems, and the RISC competition.
The new Xeon E7 v2 is no less than 80% faster than its predecessor. The nearest RISC competitor (IBM Power 7 3.55) is a lot more expensive and delivers only 70% of the performance. We have little doubt that the performance/watt ratio of the Xeon E7 v2 is a lot better too.
Intel delivers a serious blow to the RISC competition. For about 11 months, the Oracle SPARC T5-8 delivered the highest SAPS of all octal-socket machines. This insanely expensive machine, which keeps 1024 threads in flight (but executes 256 of them) is now beaten by the Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 2800E. The 240 thread octal Xeon E7-8890 v2 outperforms the former champion of Oracle by about 18%. The SPARC comeback is still remarkable, although we are pretty sure that the Fujitsu server will be less expensive. Even better is you do not have to pay the Oracle support costs.
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JohanAnandtech - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
I meant, I have never seen an independent review of high-end IBM or SUN systems. We did one back in the T1 days, but the product performed only well in a very small niche.Phil_Oracle - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Contact your Oracle rep and I am sure we'd be glad to loan you a SPARC T5 server, which we have in our loaner pool for analysts and press. Would be nice if you had a more objective view on comparisons.Phil_Oracle - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
If you look at Oracles Performance/Benchmark blog, we have comparisons between Xeon, Power and SPARC based on all publicly available benchmarks. As Oracle sells both x86 as well as SPARC, we sometimes have benchmarks available on both platforms to compare.https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/
Will Robinson - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
Intel and their CPU technology continues to impress.Those kind of performance increase numbers must leave their competitors gasping on the mat.
Props for the smart new chip. +1
Nogoodnms - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
But can it run Crysis?errorr - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
My wife would now the answer to this considering she works for ibm but considering software costs far exceed hardware costs on a life cycle basis does anyone know what the licensing costs are between the different platforms.She once had me sit down to explain to her how CPU upgrades would effect db2 licenses. The system is more arcane and I'm not sure what the cost of each core is.
For an ERP each chip type has a rated pvu metric from IBM which determines the cost of the license. Are RISC cores priced differently than x86 cores enough to partially make up the hardware costs?
JohanAnandtech - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
I know Oracle does that (risc core <> x86 core when it comes to licensing), but I must admit, Licensing is extremely boring for a technical motivated person :-).Phil_Oracle - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
In total cost of ownership calculations, where both HW and SW as well as maintenance costs are calculated, the majority of the costs (upwards of 90%) are associated with software licensing and maintenance/administration- so although HW costs matter, it’s the performance of the HW that drives the TCO. For Oracle, both Xeon and SPARC have a per core license factor of .5x, meaning 1 x license for every two cores, while Itanium and Power have a 1x multiplier, so therefore Itanium/Power must have a 2x performance/core advantage to have equivalent SW licensing costs. IBM has a PVU scale for SW licensing, which essentially is similar to Oracle but more granular in details. Microsofts latest SQL licensing follows similarly. So clearly, performance/CPU and especially per core matters in driving down licensing costs.Michael REMY - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
that would have be very good to test this cpu on 3D rendering benchmark.i can imagine the gain of time in a workstation...even the cost will be nearest a renderfarm...
but comparing this xeon to other one in that situation should have bring a view point.
JohanAnandtech - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link
What rendering engine are you thinking about? Most engines scale badly beyond 16-32 threads