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IBM POWER™ processor-based systems are the industry leader by a wide margin in systems performance. Today, in addition to leading performance, Power Systems deliver a broader scope of value—performance plus efficiency and plus availability. Increasingly, this value is achieved through systems software that uses the advanced capabilities of POWER6. The result has been more than 10 points of UNIX® revenue share gain in the past five years, passing both HP and Sun to be the number one UNIX vendor, according to IDC.

• IBM is the only major vendor to gain revenue share in the UNIX segment for the past five years (+11.2 points) while both Sun (-1.9 points) and HP (-5.7 points) lost share, according to IDC.
• IBM has helped nearly 1,200 customers migrate from competitive Sun, HP and other UNIX platforms to IBM's AIX or Linux on Power.

This new benchmark from Oracle/Sun is the same TPC-C benchmark that Oracle promised to reveal on October 14, which led to a reprimand by the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) for having made an unsubstantiated superior performance claim. (link to press release) In order to demonstrate "the world’s fastest database performance with a TPC-C benchmark" Oracle's used an Oracle RAC configuration (database for clustered servers) and a 12-Node Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 cluster. It achieved 7,717,510 tpmC, with $2.34/per tpmC. Oracle compared this result to IBM’s single system 64-core IBM Power 595 with IBM DB2 9.5, based on a TPC benchmark submitted on June 10, 2008.

Here's a deeper look at Oracle's claim and the comparison to IBM's system:

• This is not a straightforward "apples to apples" comparison: IBM system is a single server while the Sun system is a configurations with a 12 node cluster.
• The Sun cluster had a total of 384 processor cores and 3,072 threads compared to 64 cores and 128 threads in the IBM system.
• With 512GB of memory per node the Sun cluster had a total of 6TB of memory, compared to 4TB in the IBM Power 595 system.
• While the Sun tpmC per core is 20,097; the IBM tpmC per core is 95,080. The IBM result had 4.7 times higher performance.
• The Sun system will not available until 12/14/09. The IBM system has been available since December 10, 2008.
• The flash technology used in the Sun result was integral to the performance and price/performance. Flash technology wasn't even being used in benchmarks when the TPC-C published the IBM system result on June 10, 2008. IBM has leadership results using SSDs in benchmarks including the recent #1 SPC-1 benchmark (link resides outside of ibm.com)
• For clustered systems, see the outstanding systems performance of IBM DB2 pureScale on Power Systems (press release).

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IBM holds many TPC (link resides outside of ibm.com) leadership results using industry leading technology. The TPC reprimanded Oracle (link resides outside of ibm.com) on September 29 "for violations of the TPC's Fair Use Policies."

The facts as cited by an independent third party are:

• Per IDC's 2Q09 second quarter report*, IBM continues to take server sales from Sun and HP.
• Also according to IDC, in a down market in 2Q09, IBM gained 1.8 points of share. Sun lost 1.1 points and HP was essentially flat (-0.1 point).
• Finally, IDC reports that In UNIX servers in 2Q09, IBM gained 7.4 points to lead with 41.4 percent share – far ahead of Sun at 27.3 percent, which was down 4.4 points, and HP at 24.8 percent, down 1.6 points.

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Oracle has been fined for making claims they could not prove.

The Transaction Processing Council (TPC) --a non-profit corporation founded to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry-- has determined that Oracle's advertisement violated TPC policies by not adhering to basic standards of fidelity, candor, and due diligence. Oracle, who is a member of the TPC, was fined for the violation, required to remove the advertisement from websites and report back to the TPC on their steps for corrective action and future compliance. Read the TPC press release at http://www.tpc.org/letters/oraclefairuse/ (link resides outside of ibm.com) and download the letter the TPC sent Oracle at http://www.tpc.org/letters/oraclefairuse/Letter090925.pdf (link resides outside of ibm.com).

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Power = Performance + Scalability

FACT: Many of the more than 500 clients who have migrated to Power Systems from Sun SPARC systems noted that outstanding POWER performance was a major factor in their decision to move to IBM.²

FACT: The 5.00GHz 16-core IBM Power 570 uses the industry’s fastest processor and performs at levels of up to 2.3 times better than the T5440 -- with ½ the cores. Compare the 32-core 4.20GHz Power 570 to the 32-core T5440 and again the winner is clearly the 570 with 1.9 to 2.7 times the performance.³

Power = Performance - Cost

FACT: Most software today recognizes cores and threads. However, Sun focuses on performance per processor chip. IBM concentrates on providing the most performance per core and the most performance per thread to minimize software cost.

The chart below shows that the Power 560 has up to 2.4X the performance per core of the T5440.⁴

• More on IBM Power Systems vs the competition - Get the Facts.

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IBM delivered a spectacular 41% performance increase from the POWER5+ to the POWER6 processor, in a span of just 18 months – for a product that was already industry leading.

IBM's Power 595 systems have well over twice the performance per core of the best competitive HP Integrity Superdome⁵, and our Power 570 enjoys the same advantage compared to the HP Integrity rx8640⁶.

IBM has the world's fastest UNIX server of its kind in the Power 595. A June 2008 TPC-C benchmark showed the Power 595 broke the 6 million transactions-per-minute barrier for the first time ever, with triple the performance per core of a comparable HP Superdome⁷.

More performance per core can result in big potential cost savings for businesses. By acquiring two 64-core Power 595s instead of three 128-core HP Superdomes, businesses get the same level of transaction throughput using one-third fewer cores. This could lead up to:

• 30% lower hardware cost
• 20% lower energy cost
• 55% lower software licensing (per-core purchase)
• 59% less floor space

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HP's claim fails to take into consideration the POWER6 processor’s 41% performance gain moving from POWER5+ to a POWER6 processor-based 595. That gain and the 4,990 watt increase in the maximum rated system electrical load still give the POWER6 p595 20% more performance per watt than the POWER5+. More important, the Power 595 server has a performance per watt advantage versus its major competitors, the Integrity Superdome and the Sun SPARC Enterprise 9000.

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The lower frequency of Itanium means lower performance and less work performed in the same space and energy foot print.

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This claim does not consider total cost of operation. For example, the price/performance of the IBM software purchase for POWER6 has improved by 16%, because of the 41% performance increase of the POWER6. Additionally, the software cost for the Power 595 server is approximately half of the software cost for an Itanium system of equal performance based on a performance per core comparison.

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