Intel Woodcrest, AMD's Opteron and Sun's UltraSparc T1: Server CPU Shoot-out
by Johan De Gelas on June 7, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Java Webserving
As promised, we are also introducing a real world web server based on Java Server Pages (JSP). The next benchmark is based on the production Ace's Hardware message board, written by Brian Neal and Chris Rijk. This highly optimized jsp real world application uses a 2 GB object cache to minimize database access. As optimized as it may be, building up the message tree or index of the message boards and compressing it with gzip requires quite a bit of CPU power.
The benchmarked software includes:
Although this should be Sun's favored benchmark, the new Xeon Woodcrest is a real party pooper for Sun. A single 80 Watt Woodcrest 3 GHz delivers almost the performance of one T1 at 1 GHz. Luckily for Sun, it is only fair to compare the top model of Intel to Sun's own top model at 1.2 GHz, and Sun should still have a decent advantage when it comes to performance/Watt: the T1 1.2 GHz is about 20% faster than the fastest Woodcrest. However, the days where one 72 W T1 could outperform four Xeon cores while consuming about 4 times less power are over.
The new Xeon 5160, a.k.a. Woodcrest, is making it very hard for Sun to compete on price/performance: four Woodcrest cores are about twice as fast as the 8 core T1. It is interesting to note that the simple T1 core is almost doing as much work per cycle as the massive Opteron. It has twice as many cores, but they are running at half the clockspeed of the Opteron and offering - on average - only 13% lower performance. If we compare the fastest Opteron (2.6 GHz Dual core) with the fastest T1 (1.2 GHz), this proportion shouldn't change much. So a simple 1-way core with 4 threads can do as much work as pretty complex 3-way core with one thread. However, the Woodcrest CPU does not only perform better per clock, it also reaches a 3 GHz clock. Intel beats Sun here in their home territory.
AMD is also in quite a bit of trouble too. If we extrapolate our 2.4 and 2.2 GHz numbers, an Opteron at 3 GHz would still be about 25% slower than our Woodcrest at 3 GHz. Impressive!
As promised, we are also introducing a real world web server based on Java Server Pages (JSP). The next benchmark is based on the production Ace's Hardware message board, written by Brian Neal and Chris Rijk. This highly optimized jsp real world application uses a 2 GB object cache to minimize database access. As optimized as it may be, building up the message tree or index of the message boards and compressing it with gzip requires quite a bit of CPU power.
The benchmarked software includes:
- Caucho Technology's Resin 2.1.17
- Java Virtual Machine: Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 1.5.0_04-b05)
- Sybase ASE 15.0 for Solaris / Linux
Although this should be Sun's favored benchmark, the new Xeon Woodcrest is a real party pooper for Sun. A single 80 Watt Woodcrest 3 GHz delivers almost the performance of one T1 at 1 GHz. Luckily for Sun, it is only fair to compare the top model of Intel to Sun's own top model at 1.2 GHz, and Sun should still have a decent advantage when it comes to performance/Watt: the T1 1.2 GHz is about 20% faster than the fastest Woodcrest. However, the days where one 72 W T1 could outperform four Xeon cores while consuming about 4 times less power are over.
The new Xeon 5160, a.k.a. Woodcrest, is making it very hard for Sun to compete on price/performance: four Woodcrest cores are about twice as fast as the 8 core T1. It is interesting to note that the simple T1 core is almost doing as much work per cycle as the massive Opteron. It has twice as many cores, but they are running at half the clockspeed of the Opteron and offering - on average - only 13% lower performance. If we compare the fastest Opteron (2.6 GHz Dual core) with the fastest T1 (1.2 GHz), this proportion shouldn't change much. So a simple 1-way core with 4 threads can do as much work as pretty complex 3-way core with one thread. However, the Woodcrest CPU does not only perform better per clock, it also reaches a 3 GHz clock. Intel beats Sun here in their home territory.
AMD is also in quite a bit of trouble too. If we extrapolate our 2.4 and 2.2 GHz numbers, an Opteron at 3 GHz would still be about 25% slower than our Woodcrest at 3 GHz. Impressive!
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Questar - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Why? Because AMD got creamed?ashyanbhog - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
and Intel woodcrest may have fantastic performance when compared to earlier xeons,but Intel is 3 years late to the party, Opteron was here in 2003!
also remember, woodcrest is a brand new design from PIII base, manufactured on 65nm process. It is still to make its debut in the market and be available in volumes. Amd its indeed nice to see it being compared to a 3 year old design manufactued on 90nm process.
AMD still has two product launches to come this year. Move to DDR2 for opterons which should cut some power usage for the total system AND introduction of products manufactured on 65nm at the fag end of the year. Will woodcrest and conroe still retain their performance margins then? if not, for how many months or weeks has Intel grabbed this "performance crown"?
zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Consider the following:- If comparisons could be made between new products from both companies (i.e., Woodcrest versus K8L), they would be made. In the game of leapfrog that we have betweeen AMD and Intel, the comparisons will always be between existing tech and new tech. Will you be pointing out how AMD is "late to the party" when they release their new stuff?
- Making its debut and availability in volume is an issue for both AMD and Intel. It's not a valid point unless you make it across the board.
- 65nm will allow clock speeds of Opterons/A64's to increase.. but Conroe/Woodcrest speeds will be increasing as well.
ashyanbhog - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
not because AMD got creamed!a 35 billion$ dollar turnover company (Intel) is bound to make a comeback one day.
it Anandtech's review setup, its full of holes
the mysql benchmark on Dual Dual core opterons where they see a 30% drop against single core dual processor numbers in this becnhmark contradicts their own earlier benchmark where they see a 10% performance increase.
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2447&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2447&am...
they also use a substandard MSI motherboard in one of the Opteron systems and fail to mention which system was used for the benchmarks
mistakes like this, genuine or intentional, are rife throughout the review report
the whole thing looks like the rig was setup to push the performance diff b/w woodcrest and Opterons to the max,
why would anybody two months to tweak settings before they publish the review!
Questar - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Why? Because AMD got creamed?duploxxx - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
yeah right its a workstation motherboard it uses an nforce controller so maybe they rate it as server board it still is a budget board used for workstations, not a real server board or server chipset like they used on the intel woodcrest.check the servers like sun galaxy and hp dl385 they have amd chipsets... big difference.
the nforce has a shared memory bus...
zsdersw - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
Yeah, that's one of the 3 Opteron servers. At any rate, the MSI board is a basic server board.. it's still a server board.duploxxx - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
yeah they have done 1 real bench with an hp. all other benches were done with the 2 MSI basic boards...still waiting for the wintel benches
wolaris - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
In corporate environments, no-one with any hardware budget at all runs webserver and database on the same machine, as it hurts both performance and reliability. This affects T1 most, as its low clock speed and simple cores are not meant for database workloads.I think that you should run web serving tests using common, high-performance Opteron DB server and separate webservers, as it would be the case in real-world scenarios.
MrKaz - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
So Power consuming of the new Intel processor on .65nm at already high clock speed of 3.0Ghz is already consuming more than the older AMD Opteron on .90nm 2.8Ghz and DDR.When AMD releases socket F will go DDR2 (less power) and better .90nm samples (lower power). So then "new" Intel is already getting beaten...
And those tests where done with Cool&Quite?
Also don’t forget this tests where done with Woodcrest 3.0Ghz VS Opteron 2.2Ghz and 2.4Ghz, so when AMD releases the 2.8Ghz and 3.0Ghz with socket F the performance lead of Intel will vanish…
I think the biggest surprise here is how bad Xeon (P4) was (IS!!), and people keep buying it.