Red Hat Sets New Industry Benchmark Performance Records

The dust is starting to settle around last week’s Intel Xeon 5500 series processor “Nehalem-EP” launch, in which Red Hat was a prominent partner. Intel called it their “most revolutionary server processors since…the Intel Pentium Pro processor 15 years ago.” The proof may be in the large number of new performance records that were established at the launch in which Red Hat and our partners exceeded previous results on eight different industry-standard tests. The results delivered by the applications that we ran reflect the real-world scalability and performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the new quad-core Intel processors.

Top 11 SPECWeb(c)2005 results based on Red Hat

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been a consistent choice for performance and reliability on web applications. Systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux held all 10 of the Top 10 SPECWeb(c)2005 results. With the latest Red Hat performance results, Red Hat Enterprise Linux now holds the top 11 places.1

The HP ProLiant DL360 G6 is faster in delivering dynamic web content than other systems tested. The results are 70 percent higher than the nearest 8-core RISC system, and 80 percent higher than the next 2-socket x86 system. In fact, the energy-efficient 2-socket system performed better than the 4-socket system now in second place. (Of course, it is also powered by Red Hat.)

Six new 2-socket HPC benchmarks

An intelligent operating system is a critical component for large compute-intensive workloads, especially on the new generation of multi-core CPUs. The HPC benchmarks may appear industry-specific, but they share characteristics every IT professional should care about. The problem sizes are large to be reflective of the size of real world problems. They use every core in the system and drive the memory system to its maximum. By driving systems toward saturation, they demonstrate the efficiency and stability of the operating system under load.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux set new standards for 2-socket systems in six HPC benchmarks.2 Four of them were on commercial computer simulation applications broadly used in manufacturing. The performance gain over previous Intel Xeon 5400 processors ranged from 70 percent to 115 percent. Faster results in material simulation while consuming less power generally translates directly into saving time and money.

Another commercial HPC benchmark was developed for the the oil reservoir software, Eclipse(c) by Schlumberger. Using a very complicated data set, this demanding application models the interaction of rock, oil and drilling techniques. Energy companies run Eclipse simulations for days, weeks and months to optimize their tactics to extract crude oil. The latest results are 150 percent faster than previous Intel Xeon 5400 results.

Cisco and Red Hat benchmark

Cisco and Red Hat showcased the performance of the newest server in the market, the Cisco Unified Computing System, by exceeding the previous Intel mark in SPECopmMbase by 154 percent. This brand new blade server from Cisco captured the top spot for 2-socket systems only two weeks after it was introduced. Achieving top performance on the latest hardware – right at launch - is another proof point of the capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Oracle Applications and Red Hat benchmark

The final benchmark to cover is somewhat different than the others. The Oracle Applications (OASB) benchmark models Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) activities running Oracle E-Business Suite 11i. The workload is designed to replicate a true corporate workload with multiple batch and interactive processes competing for resources in the systems. Oracle’s E-Business Suite, combined with Red Hat delivered order-to-cash batch processing of 55,866 lines/hour and 81,522 payroll checks/hour to achieve the number one result for a 2-socket system.3

Oracle’s E-business Suite is a multi-tier web application and Red Hat Enterprise Linux was used across the web/application and the database servers. A single HP ProLiant DL380 G6 server ran Oracle’s 10g Database, while BL685c blades were used for the application and web tiers.

It is no accident that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was ready to take full advantage of the eight cores and the new memory architecture of Intel Xeon 5500 processors in the latest servers. Red Hat and our partners have been working to optimize this new generation of multi-core, non-uniform memory architecture processors. By working closely with our hardware and software partners, Red Hat helps to provide customers with certified and supported platforms on which to drive their business from the day on which they are introduced.

Read more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux here.