Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD Benchmarks

[kebabbert]

KRAFTMAN,

My links are not from SUN website, they are from other independent web sites. Ive shown you several links about bad scaling and bad code Linux has. One such link was from a Linux kernel developer Andrew Morton himself, and another link was from a linux site, stating that Linux was 250 times slower on 64 cpus. But I understand if you think my links are retarded and doesnt count. It is ok if you think I am a Solaris fanatic with no evidence to back up my preference for Solaris.



I think it is interesting that you state that you "I saw something different [about Solaris being faster than Linux], but it doesn't matter." How did you, and when did you compare Solaris to Linux? I myself ran Linux for several years, and have now switched to Solaris. Maybe I have more experience than you have, of both OSes?



Anyway, Linux never let me down.Everything I wanted to do, Linux did. You know, I dont have a massive computing cluster at home to stress Linux with. For a single person Linux will do fine. The problem is that it doesnt cut it for big loads, as you can see from some independent company blogs Ive posted. So what happens if I know Linux, and then my company grows and we have to switch to Solaris? Then I am already familiar to Solaris!



But actually, it doesnt really matter. If Solaris dies, I just switch back to Linux. Both are "Unix". And I will be a better Unix admin than you, because Ive had experience from two systems. It's like when you program; if you know one programming language, or if you know two - then you will learn new techniques and methods which gives you a better understanding of programming in general. The gurus says that a good programmer should now several programming languages; C, Java, lisp, etc to broaden the knowledge.




Seriously, if Linux were better I would switch back. I mean it. But as of now, Solaris is simply the best OS out there, in my opinion. But if I see links and articles stating otherwise, I will switch again. Unix or Unix, same-same but different. All my knowledge is not wasted. I have learnt Unix and can use it on Linux or Solaris. gnu is the same on both, so is Vi/emacs, gcc, eclipse, X11, Java, etc. Please provide some links saying that Solaris is unstable and scales badly - in comparison with Linux.



I love the fact that one company migrated 251 Dell 2950 Linux servers each having 2 cpus, that ran 700 instances of MySQL down to... 24 SUN Niagara T5440 Solaris servers! Wow. That's really cool tech! I admire the best tech. Be it Unix or Unix. Doesnt matter.

http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/mysql_consolidation_on_sun_sparc

I also like that 3 IBM AIX servers with 12 Power6 CPUs at 4.7 GHz got 7000 SIEBEL benchmarks. Whereas one SUN T5440 machine with 4 Niagara 1.4 GHz CPUs gets 14000 SIEBEL benchmarks. IBM had in total 56.4 GHz worth of cpu and got 7000 SIEBEL. SUN had in total 5.6 GHz and got 14000 SIEBEL. Now, THAT is cool! Dont you think that? You dont admire cool ground breaking tech? Here are collected links to Oracle web site with the formal papers with benchmarks:

http://blogs.sun.com/mandalika/entry/siebel_8_0_on_sun

ENERGYMAN,
The links Ive provided earlier are not from SUN site. They are from independent sites. If I need an opinion if Solaris is dying, I will surely not ask some Linux CEO that talks in his own favour.

1. So what? If Solaris dies, I switch back to Linux. But, SUN niagara servers is selling for $1bn USD and it increases 80% each 4 month period. There are lots of smaller Linux companies that get fed up with all the Linux hassle and instability and turns to Solaris. As you can see from my links Ive posted.

2. Cool. But as I said, that is not commodity Linux. It is easy to rip out everything from Linux and tailor it for one purpose. That could also be done with Solaris, but it is more difficult. The Solaris kernel is very elaborate and complicated. And, Solaris scales better. It is not 250 times slower on 64 cpus. (Come on, if that is not bad scaling, then when do you see bad scaling?)

3. Wow. So when someone critize Linux, it is not OK? Linux people can rightly attack Solaris and everyone else, but Linux should not accept any critiscm? Hmm.. What is that called? Cant remember the word...

[energyman]

Niagara.. you mentioned 'numbercrunshing' earlier. Think about it. And think about the fact, that no big iron uses niagara... it is good at doing lots of very simple stuff in parallel. Sadly not everything is simple.

[kraftman]

@kebabbert

What are you trying to proof? You're fanboy in my opinion. You're repeating same bullshit all the time and if you know such revelations as you already said post a new thread and Solaris fanboys will feel there like in Heaven. I don't believe that you used Linux on desktop, switched to Solaris and now you say that Solaris is faster. It's slow as dog on desktop in comparison to Linux. I probably should fill bug report as someone mentioned before, but I'm completely uninterested what's going around this great and very unappreciated system.

I realized that benchmarks in many cases are meaningless so you don't have to use Google, which is based on Linux, too much. It can be very frustrating to you.

Btw. Playing in posts is funny only for short time.

[energyman]

http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/bench.html

[kebabbert]

Niagara.. you mentioned 'numbercrunshing' earlier. Think about it. And think about the fact, that no big iron uses niagara... it is good at doing lots of very simple stuff in parallel. Sadly not everything is simple.

Actually, I dont understand your post. So what about number crunching and Niagara? Do you mean that Niagara sucks at nr crunching, or that it is good? So what should I think about it? I dont understand. FYI, The 1.4 GHz Niagara has the world record in both SPECint2006 and SPECfp2006, faster than, for instance, the previous record keeper IBM Power6 4.7 GHz on number crunching:

http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/tags/specint_rate2006

And "no big iron uses niagara", so what? Niagara is good enough. In fact, Ive heard of some company that migrated their entire IBM mainframe to one T5440 SUN with 4 Niagara cpus. Cant remember where. And STRATA, Europes largest web provider handles up to one billion email/day, migrated their entire Back End to one T5440 with lots of cpu power over. There are lots of similar stories, companies migrate 40 racks with 64 AMD cpus to one SUN T5440 and cut power drastically. And sys admins. And spare parts. etc. And the T5440 is cheap, it costs like 82 000 USD and one similar configured IBM Power6 server costs 412 000 USD. And the T5440 is much faster also.



Yes, Niagara is only good at doing simple stuff, such as running Oracle and SAP (T5440 holds world records in both. Oracle benchmarks, I have linked to. SAP benchmarks: http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/tags/sap ), MySQL I have linked to, etc etc. And it is the world's fastest cpu at number crunching, which I have shown above. Yes, Niagara is only good at simple stuff, that has no use at companies. Totally worth less CPU, I concur.



The Niagara CPU is unique. Yes, totally unique. Studies from Intel corp show that even under full load a typical x86 server CPU idles 50-60% of the time. This is due to cache misses which all CPU architectures suffer from; they must wait for data to arrive from RAM. That is also why modern CPUs have larger cache, complex prefetch logic, etc. However, CPUs belonging to the T1 family do not suffer from this problem. Instead, as soon a T1 thread stalls due to a cache miss, the T1 switches thread in 1 clock cycle and continues to do work while waiting for the data. Typically on a modern CPU, a thread switch takes a much longer time than 1 clock cycle. This is the reason a T1 can work 95% of the time and only waits for data 5% of the time. Compare this to an x86 CPU at 3 GHz. Because the x86 CPU can only work at half speed due to cache misses, it can be compared to a 1.5 GHz CPU working at full speed. However, one of the T1 threads can compare to an Intel Pentium 3 CPU at 1 GHz in terms of computing power.

Also, in best case scenario, the Niagara can run all 8 threads in one core, simultaneously. That happens when they are in different stage in the cpu pipeline. Not so an Intel x86, a thread occupies the entire core.

You see now, that the Niagara is totally unique? And ZFS. And DTrace. DTrace is pure magic. (DTrace allows the finding of Solaris kernel bugs that are impossible to find otherwise. DTrace only makes Solaris more stable and scalable). And Zones. And Crossbow. etc etc I could go on and on. Seriously. I really really do think SUN has excellent engineers. Maybe you Linux guys dont think so, but that is ok. Maybe you linux guys thinks that ZFS sucks. And DTrace. And Niagara. etc. That is ok. Anyway, all is Unix. If SUN dies, I switch back to Linux. Nothing is lost. Unix is Unix.

[kebabbert]

@kebabbert

What are you trying to proof? You're fanboy in my opinion. You're repeating same bullshit all the time and if you know such revelations as you already said post a new thread and Solaris fanboys will feel there like in Heaven. I don't believe that you used Linux on desktop, switched to Solaris and now you say that Solaris is faster. It's slow as dog on desktop in comparison to Linux. I probably should fill bug report as someone mentioned before, but I'm completely uninterested what's going around this great and very unappreciated system.

I realized that benchmarks in many cases are meaningless so you don't have to use Google, which is based on Linux, too much. It can be very frustrating to you.

I dont say that Solaris is faster than Linux on my hardware. But I can repeat again: I say that Linux did suffice, it did everything for me, and well. I said that Linux doesnt cut it for big loads. Ive personally never had any such load. I told you. Why do I always have to repeat myself?



And, Google is running an modified Linux kernel. Not commodity Linux. Google started as a small company. They use lots of cheap servers with low utilization, because Linux becomes unstable at high utilization. I know that Google has been examining Solaris. If Google could run servers on 100% load with Solaris, than 50% load with Linux - Google would save lots of energy.

[energyman]

no, you came up all the time that linux is only good for numbercrunshing and nothing else. Ignoring the fact that linux kills Solaris off everywhere.
And then you bring up Niagara - which is a chip designed for multi threaded numbercrunshing. It is good at that - and nothing else.

[kebabbert]

http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/bench.html

Wow! One benchmark at last! Thanx for that.

The only problem is that they are using some odd home brewn distro of Solaris, v0.51 or so. I think that benchmark is unfair. We could bench Solaris 10 against Ubuntu v0.51 and see who would win?

A better link, please. Remember, if you present good enough evidence that Linux is the best, I will switch. I only use the best tech. Why use something inferior?





NGRGYMAN,
Yes, the CHIP is good for number crunching. But Solaris is something else. The OS and the chip are totally different things. The chip may be good, but the OS suck, or vice versa.

And it is a fact that the best tech doesnt always win. Remember VHS vs Betamax? And Windows has 90% market share, and that tech sucks big time. The best tech doesnt win always.

[energyman]

he took the two leading opensolaris distributions. If you want to, I am sure that Felix v. L. would gladhly accept a big box with Solaris whatever installed on it - as long as he has not to pay for it,

[kraftman]

I dont say that Solaris is faster than Linux on my hardware. But I can repeat again: I say that Linux did suffice, it did everything for me, and well. I said that Linux doesnt cut it for big loads. Ive personally never had any such load. I told you. Why do I always have to repeat myself?



And, Google is running an modified Linux kernel. Not commodity Linux. Google started as a small company. They use lots of cheap servers with low utilization, because Linux becomes unstable at high utilization. I know that Google has been examining Solaris. If Google could run servers on 100% load with Solaris, than 50% load with Linux - Google would save lots of energy.

If Solaris could compare with Linux in big loads Google and many other companies would just use it. They don't base on crap what you gave here. In my opinion your only intention is to make flame. If Solaris isn't faster then Linux on your box why you use it? Because of fanaticism?


If you're interested:

http://www.dbazine.com/olc/olc-articles/ault8

and another one using 2.4.x kernel:

http://www.osnews.com/story/4867/Sun_Versus_Linux_The_x86_Smack-down/page3/