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IBM Power Systems performance benchmarks

Including performance benchmarks for Power servers, System p, and System i

Power = performance + scalability

IBM Power™ Systems demonstrate IBM's continued commitment to organizations of all sizes. The family of IBM Power Systems includes the new Power servers as well as earlier System p™ and System i™ servers. In addition to energy efficiency and virtualization technologies, Power systems offer outstanding performance. In fact, IBM Power Systems took the lead in over 70 key computing performance benchmarks. But don't take our word for it. Read the results below.

LINPACK

Measures how fast a dedicated system can solve a dense system of linear equations as a means of determining the floating-point performance of the system. It is used to gauge effectiveness for high performance and technical computing.

Source: http://performance.netlib.org/performance/html/PDSreports.html (link resides outside of ibm.com)

Stream

Measures sustainable memory bandwidth and the corresponding computation rate for simple vector kernels.

Source: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECOMPM2001

Measures a system's parallel processing capabilities for medium problem sizes using a suite of applications based on the OpenMP standards for shared-memory parallel processing. It is used to gauge effectiveness for high performance and technical computing.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECOMPL2001

Measures a system's parallel processing capabilities for large problem sizes using a suite of applications based on the OpenMP standards for shared-memory parallel processing. It is used to gauge effectiveness for high performance and technical computing.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECfp2006

Measures the compute-intensive floating point speed of the computer processor, memory architecture, and compilers.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECfp_rate2006

Determines the number of tasks from a collection of 17 floating-point compute intensive programs that can be run in a specified time.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECint2006

Measures the compute-intensive integer speed of the computer processor, memory architecture, and compilers.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECint_rate2006

Determines the number of tasks from a collection of 12 integer compute intensive programs that can be run in a specified time.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECfp2000

Measures how fast a single processor, cache, and memory can run a collection of 14 floating-point compute-intensive programs.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECfp_rate2000

Determines the number of tasks from a collection of 14 floating-point compute intensive programs that can be run in a specified time.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SPECint_rate2000

Determines the number of tasks from a collection of 12 integer compute intensive programs that can be run in a specified time.

Source: http://www.spec.org (link resides outside of ibm.com)

SIMULIA

Abaqus is SIMULIA's flagship product and provides a comprehensive, general-purpose finite element analysis tool that includes a variety of time and frequency-domain analysis procedures. A lower number indicates faster performance.

Abaqus/Standard Version 6.6

Abaqus/Explicit Version 6.6

Source: http://www.simulia.com/support/sup_systems_info.html (link resides outside of ibm.com)

ANSYS — ANSYS V11

ANSYS is a Finite Element Analysis Simulation Software package that provides solutions for conceptual design through final stage testing and performance validation from design concept to final-stage testing and performance validation. The ANSYS Product Suite is used in Structural, Thermal, Mechanical, Acoustics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Electrical and Electromagnetic Analyses

Source: www.ansys.com/services/hardware-support-db.htm (link resides outside of ibm.com)

CD-adapco - STAR-CD Versions 3.20

STAR-CD is a general purpose, unstructured grid, finite volume CFD application. It is efficiently programmed and highly parallel using the MPI communication protocol. STAR-CD is able to solve steady state or time dependent problems with the optional solution of moving grids, thermal transport, chemical reactions, multiphase fluids, and species concentrations. A lower number indicates a faster result.

Source: http://www.cd-adapco.com/products/STAR-CD/performance/320/index.html (link resides outside of ibm.com)

FLUENT - FLUENT V6.2

Leading Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Software package used for simulation, visualization, and prediction of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, and chemical reactions. FLUENT along with its suite of pre- and post-processor software solutions covers the entire CFD modeling process - concept, design, analysis and simulation. A higher number indicates a faster result.

Source: http://www.fluent.com/software/fluent/index.htm (link resides outside of ibm.com)

MSC.Software

MSC Nastran is a structural analysis program utilizing simple to complex, linear and nonlinear analyses techniques for analyzing stress, vibration, dynamic, nonlinear and heat transfer characteristics of structures and mechanical components.

MSC.Nastran MDR3

MSC.Nastran V2005

MD Nastran V2006

Source: http://www.mscsoftware.com/support/prod_support/nastran/performance/ (link resides outside of ibm.com)

MM5 Weather Model

The PSU/NCAR mesoscale model (known as MM5) is a limited-area, nonhydrostatic, terrain-following sigma-coordinate model designed to simulate or predict mesoscale atmospheric circulation. The model is supported by several pre- and post-processing programs, which are referred to collectively as the MM5 modeling system. A higher number indicates a faster result.

MM5 Version 3.6 (Standard)

MM5 Version 3.6.2 (Optimized)

Source: http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/mm5/ (link resides outside of ibm.com)

WRF Version 2.1.1

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a next-generation mesoscale numerical weather prediction system designed to serve both operational forecasting and atmospheric research needs. It features multiple dynamical cores, a 3-dimensional variational (3DVAR) data assimilation system, and a software architecture allowing for computational parallelism and system extensibility. WRF is suitable for a broad spectrum of applications across scales ranging from meters to thousands of kilometers. One test case was run: Standard 12km CONUS input (seconds per step averaged over 149 time steps).

Source: http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/WG2/bench/ (link resides outside of ibm.com)

All benchmark claims are based on published information as of April 23,2009. IBM Power 550 5 GHz and Power 520 4.7 GHz results to be submitted as of April 28, 2009.

IBM, the e-business logo, eServer, the eServer logo, AIX, AIX 5L, DB2, DB2 Universal Database, Domino, IBM Virtualization Engine, Micro-Partitioning, OpenPower, Power Architecture, POWER, POWER5, POWER5+, POWER6, Power Systems, System p and System p5 are trademarks or registered trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

SPECjbb, SPECweb, SPECint, SPEComp, and SPECfp are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC).

©2009 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved.

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