The IBM POWER8 Review: Challenging the Intel Xeon
by Johan De Gelas on November 6, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- CPUs
- Enterprise
- Enterprise CPUs
- IBM
- POWER
- POWER8
Benchmark Configuration and Methodology
For our testing we installed 64-bit Ubuntu 15.04 Linux (Kernel version 3.19.0) so that we were able to use GCC 4.9.2, which has better support for the POWER8. We tried to keep the colors inside our benchmark graphs consistent: dark blue is IBM, light blue is the latest Intel Xeon generation (Haswell, E5 v3), and gray was reserved for older Intel systems.
Meanwhile on a quick aside, we should point out that IBM's servers also support PowerVM and KVM virtualization, however we decided not to make use of it to keep the complexity of the tests under control. As we explained in the introduction, porting and tuning the usual benchmarks was quite a challenge, and virtualization makes benchmarking a lot more complex. Testing virtualized workloads was thus beyond the scope of this article.
All tests have been done with the help of Kirth and Wannes of the Sizing Servers Lab.
IBM S822L (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two IBM POWER8 3.425 GHz 10 cores |
| RAM | 128GB (8x16GB) IBM CDIMMs |
| Internal Disks | 2x 300GB 15K RPM SAS Disks (boot) 1x Intel DC P3700 400 GB (Data and benchmarks) |
| Motherboard | No idea |
| BIOS version | OPAL v3 |
| PSU | Dual Emerson 1400W |
Intel's Xeon E5 Server – "Wildcat Pass" (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v3 (2.3GHz, 18c, 45MB L3, 145W) Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2695 v3 (2.3 GHz, 14c, 35MB L3, 120W) Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2667 v3 (3.2 GHz, 8c, 20MB L3, 135W) Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2650L v3 (1.8GHz, 12c, 30MB L3, 65W) |
| RAM | 128GB (8x16GB) Samsung M393A2G40DB0 (RDIMM) |
| Internal Disks | 2x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB (boot) 1x Intel DC P3700 400 GB (Data and benchmarks) |
| Motherboard | Intel S2600WTT |
| BIOS version | version 1.01 |
| PSU | Delta Electronics 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
All C-states are enabled in both the BIOS.
Other Notes
Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) powerline. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs.
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JohanAnandtech - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Ok, Europe adopt the dot, but maybe the US can adopt the metric system like the rest of the world? :-)bitaljus - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
or better yet recode this site to see from what country u are visiting and use the appropriate denote thousands symbol, appropriate metric system and even time for the viewer. how meany time i was irradiated when i need to google something like this just to make it in local. and this is easy to do in the site natively. (P.S. Sorry for bad English, not native)nils_ - Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - link
The browser already sends a header with Accept-Language, which should be the preferred way to for the web site to determine locale. For example, I live in Germany so my browser will send en, en_UK, en_US, de and DE (this can be set somewhere in the settings). Now you can determine the language and other localisation based upon that, and there are tools where you can set the locale to then display dates, times etc.. based n that.Many sites instead use Geolocation based on the IP address, which can be really awkward when you travel to a country where you can't read the language.
ZeDestructor - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Even within EU it's not consistent.. UK uses commas for thousands, dot for decimal (and that's why the US and most anglophone countries use the same setup), Germany, Netherlands and France on the other hand favour dots for thousands, commas for decimal, so you see it used there.. and in a great number of their former colonies where the language and culture has stuck.nils_ - Wednesday, November 11, 2015 - link
Dates / Time are even funnier, that's also extremely inconsistent and can be very misleading. Think for examle a date like 12/11/2015, in some countries it'll mean the 12th of November while in others it will mean the 11th of December, and sometimes even the 2015th of November in 11 AD ;)I remember reading on the GTA IV in-game "Internet" a travel guide to Europe that said the months here have 12 days but there are 30 months a year or something to that effect ;)
powchie - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
let Johan do more reviews. been reading his stuff from late 90's and consider him the best then followed by Anand.Ryan Smith - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Trust me when I say that if I could whip Johan any harder and make him work any faster I would be doing just that.;-)juhatus - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
When the Balrog showed up for work he had everyone fired.ruthan - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
In summary should be something about software support, raw power is here, but software stack isvery limited.
PowerCPU is good for old legacy apps - SAP, Oracle etc.. but otherwise its dead end.
I would like to see comparision of IBM LPAR virtualization against Xeon Vmware solution, or Oracle / MySQL benchmark on power vs. Oracle benchmark on Xeon.
Server with Power even cant to run Crysis, or maybe some QEMU magic..
ruthan - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Pleas Ad edit button like other civilized sites, i was hurry when i wrote it.