POWER9 Benchmarks vs. Intel Xeon vs. AMD EPYC Performance On Debian Linux

[pete910]

While mentioned why I didn't include price/Watt, I opted to not include price/dollar because it's really tough to get an accurate comparison of the total cost of ownership.... Since these systems tested didn't have identical storage, the Tyan servers had redundant power supplies, different amounts of RAM, etc. So would have been messy trying to compare the total cost of ownership in a fully comparable manner. Especially in the server/workstation market where many customers get discounts from their sales when ordering in any volumes, etc. If just using the CPU price itself, that isn't entirely reflective either with there being many more EPYC/Xeon motherboards available at lower cost than POWER9, so really looking then at just one aspect.

While I see your point on the pricing the same then holds true for performance comparison does it not ?

[George99]

If they would produce a more affordable single socket system, I might consider it. For now, it's just too expensive.

Don't expect to save a great amount of bucks buying a single socket system. This is not a consumer product made in a mass production process so you will have development costs as an important part of the overall retail price.

[rene]

given I used plenty of PPC systems since ~2003 I'm not really surprised, … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6gftviaOp4 https://t2sde.org/hardware/desktop/Apple/G5/

[hiryu]

If you buy the pieces individually and build the system yourself, it will shave a few thousand off the price of this thing. It will still be quite expensive, but largely due to the motherboard costing over $2k and having to purchase ECC memory (and memory prices have really seem to gone up over the last year or so).

Anyway, hopefully this is just due to optimization issues... I suspect it is. I also suspect that POWER would get more traction in this area than say... SPARC.

I did some basic benchmarks many years ago where I found that gcc 3.x gave about 1/4th the speed of Sun's compiler on SPARC hardware... And this gap never really changed much. In this case, IBM has made sure to get Linux ported to POWER9 even before their own AIX operating system, so I think there's a realistic chance that IBM would want to see this situation at least partially rectified.

[curaga]

*drool* want, but the cost.

so I think there's a realistic chance that IBM would want to see this situation at least partially rectified.

IBM has been offering POWER8 and POWER9 bounties for years now, for making software work there and making it fast. For example x265 and vpx have had bounties for Altivec.

[ElectricPrism]

And people scream bloody murder about spending $2500 for a nicely equipped Core i9 system or $3500 if you want to go all the way up to the 7980XE.

Am I the only one around here who feels the iX have lost all meaning and credibility. They can take their i9 and shove it up their ass.

[Iridium]

Hi Michael, out of curiosity, running the Power9 in BE vs LE gives different results ?
thanks

[madscientist159]

I checked Talos site. Just under $10k for this configuration.

Not entirely sure the cost complaints are valid here. If you remove DDR4 memory costs, etc. and just compare CPU, mainboard, and heatsinks you get numbers like this:

Talos: $3,400
EPYC: $5,200

From https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/st...96742515904513

[starshipeleven]

And people scream bloody murder about spending $2500 for a nicely equipped Core i9 system or $3500 if you want to go all the way up to the 7980XE.

Complete bullshit comparison, as usual. Talos does not manufacture processors themselves, they just make the board.

And yeah, for the price and features, a Core i9 is throwing money out of the window. If your (server) application is actually designed for Power processors, a 22-core Power CPU costing slightly more than the 7980XE rapes the i9 on any metric, while a high-end i7 is either within spitting distance (gaming) or so cheaper that you can just buy x2 systems and run them as a cluster to outperform the i9.

[pegasus]

Nobody mentioned a fact that these power systems are completely open, down to the firmware level, which is becoming important in this day and age of embedded "security" and "platform management" stuff ... This fact alone is enough to place this system very high on my wish list. Performance is secondary as long as it is "fast enough".