Sun Microsystems Inc’s single system Ultra Enterprise 10000 Starfire SMP server provides better price performance when running 1Tb TPC-D data warehouse benchmarks than multi-node systems from IBM Corp and NCR Corp, but is still slightly more expensive than a cluster of its own Ultra Enterprise 6000 servers. With 64 336MHz UltraSparc RISCs, Oracle 8.04.2 (due in June) and 64Gb RAM Starfire’s price/performance is $1,508, TPC-D power rating is 8,870 and system cost over five years is $8.53m. IBM’s SP 309 with 32 eight-way PowerPC nodes offers a price/performance of $2,095, a power rating of 7,633 and costs $13.14m over five years. NCR’s WorldMark 5150 with 32 four-way Intel nodes offers a price/performance of $2,103, a 12,149 power rating and costs $14.49m over five years. Sun’s cluster of four 24-way UE6000 nodes offers a price/performance of $1,353, a power rating of 12,931 and costs $11.7m. The long-awaited TPC-C numbers for Starfire are expected in the third quarter after 64-bit Solaris 2.7 is released. The TPC-D results were achieved with Solaris 2.6. Greater competition is expected from Intel-based servers when the Deschutes core-based Pentium II Xeon processor is introduced on the next generation of eight-way Standard High Volume. Thereafter Merced takes over.
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