Sun demonstrated that a Sun Fire E25K server with 72 of its dual-core UltraSparc-IV processors running at 1.2GHz was able to crank through 59,436 queries per hour (QPH) on the TPC-H test with a 3,000GB data warehouse.
This system was configured with 288GB of main memory (only half of the maximum on the system, oddly enough) and over 84TB of disk capacity. This machine cost $11.1 million, and Sun gave a 42% discount on the system.
This yielded a price/performance of $114 per QPH. Nearly two years ago, when Sun was cranking out the single-core UltraSparc-III chips at the same clock speed (1.2GHz), a Sun Fire E15K server with the same memory and running Solaris 9 and Oracle 9i Release 2 was able to 28,948 QPH at a cost of $184 per QPH.
That E15K cost just over $8 million at list, and had a 33% discount. Sun’s big improvement in bang for the buck on this test comes from deeper discounting as well as nearly doubling the performance.
More importantly, on the 3,000GB TPC-H test, which is a multithreaded environment that the Sun box (with 144 threads) just loves, the E25K is besting competitive iron from Hewlett-Packard Co and Fujitsu Siemens. In March 2004, HP was showing off a 64-way Superdome server running HP-UX 11i and Oracle 10g, which was able to do 45,248 QPH at a cost of $109.
That Superdome, configured with 1.5GHz Itaniums, 256GB of memory, and 77TB of disk, had a whopping 51% discount to achieve that bang for the buck. A Fujitsu-Siemens PrimePower 2500 tested at around the same time was able to handle about 34,354 QPH at a cost of $147 per QPH (that price includes a 29% discount). The PrimePower 2500 used Fujitsu’s 1.3GHz Sparc64 V processors, 256GB of main memory, and 53TB of disk.
