New x64 Sun Microsystems Server Sets Benchmark Records

The new Sun Fire X4640 server may use up to eight Six-Core AMD Opteron processors and is the most compact 24-to-48-core system available from tier-one vendors. The server delivers enterprise-class performance and also allows for significant cost savings through combining the Solaris operating system with Sun's integrated infrastructure.

The server has a total of 64 memory slots for up to half a terabyte of memory and is capable of a 65% better performance than the Sun Fire X4600M2 server. As a more notable competition, when tested by the two-tier SAP(R) Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, the system was matched against an HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server (which uses a faster CPU and the Windows OS), a 16-processor NEC Express 5800 server and a four-processor IBM System 550 server.

The server showed the advantages of the Oracle Database combined with the Solaris OS when 10,000 SAP SD benchmark users ran the SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode). The server's x86 Unicode-based performance was 22% better than the ProLiant, 33% better that NEC's server and no less than 2.7 times that of IBM's System 550.

The Sun Fire X4640 can assist customers in increasing data-center efficiency and is a platform well suited for virtualization, consolidation and HPC applications. Although it works best with Solaris, the server also supports Windows, Linux and VMware operating systems. The 48 compute threads and half a terabyte of memory allowed the X4640 to also make the top of the list on the SPECompL2001 benchmark, which simulates the heavy computing tasks often employed in high-energy physics, weather modeling, computational chemistry and mechanical design. The medium and large sets of problems are meant to evaluate the computer's OpenMP implementation, as well as the strength of its processor, memory and compilers.

The results scored by Sun Microsystems' enterprise server prove its high computational capabilities and established Solaris OS and Sun Studio as leaders in the OpenMP. Details on the benchmarking results may be located at http://www.sun.com/benchmarks.