Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server Sets World Record for x86 Systems on TPC-C Benchmark

(As of Tuesday, 27 March 2012)

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 server running Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition with Oracle Linux demonstrated the world's fastest x86 OLTP database performance on the TPC-C benchmark. The new x86 world-record result beats the next best score by 68 percent and is 3x faster than the best published eight CPU result (see table).

The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) is a non-profit corporation founded to define transaction processing and database benchmarks. TPC Benchmark C (TPC-C) is an online transaction processing (OLTP) benchmark that simulates a complete computing environment and has a balanced mix of transactions executed against a database. TPC-C benchmark is applicable to any industry that must manage, sell, or distribute a product or service.

The results of TPC-C benchmark are represented in transactions per minute (tpmC) and generally accepted by the industry as measure of transactional database performance. TPC-C benchmark allows across-the-board performance comparisons of solutions presented by different vendors and includes detailed pricing data for each configuration that is used to determine price per transaction.

All results must go through an audit process before they are available to general public. The audit is conducted by an independent body and ensures compliance with TPC rules as well as objectivity and reproducibility of results.

• Oracle's best-in-class solution consisted of one Sun Fire X4800 M2 server, 20 of Oracle's Sun Storage F5100 Flash Arrays, and 12 of Oracle's Sun Fire X4270 M2 high-capacity storage servers, and showcased the massive data capacity and accelerated I/O performance needed for this complex OLTP benchmark. When combined with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition using Oracle Partitioning, the solution delivered an x86 world-record TPC-C benchmark result of 5,055,888 tpmC with a price/performance of US$0.89/tpmC.
• Compared to the best published x86 result, the Sun Fire X4800 M2 server with Oracle Database 11g demonstrated 68 percent better performance than the IBM System x3850 X5 with four processors while delivering 63 percent better average response time for New Order and Payment transactions (see table).
• Compared to systems of similar processing capacity, the Sun Fire X4800 M2 server with Oracle Database 11g demonstrated over 3x better performance at 1/4 the price per transaction in 1/3 the physical space of the POWER6-based IBM System p 570 with the same number of processors while delivering 50 percent better average response time for New Order transactions (see table).
• On the storage side, the record-setting Sun Fire X4800 M2 server utilized Oracle's Sun FlashFire technology for database acceleration in conjunction with Sun Fire X4270 M2 high-storage capacity servers that were also used to store database redo logs. Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) was used to manage all database files across 10 Sun Storage F5100 Flash Arrays, which provided sub-millisecond I/O response times as well as much higher I/O rates than traditional disk in only a fraction of physical space with much lower power consumption. Each array measures only 1U, consumes only 300 W, and has almost 2 TB of ultra-fast Sun FlashFire storage.
• The record-setting Sun Fire X4800 M2 server running Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition with Oracle Partitioning running on top of Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel demonstrated excellent stability and extreme data throughput capability.
• As evidenced by this ground breaking TPC-C benchmark result, the Sun Fire X4800 M2 server is capable of reaching and surpassing the performance levels of much larger systems.
• This new benchmark result highlights Oracle's focus on delivering complete hardware and software solutions optimized to work together to deliver new levels of performance. Moreover, since TPC-C rules require the price of the solution to include hardware, software, and maintenance over a three-year period, these results demonstrate that Oracle provides the best long-term value to its customers.
• Oracle Database 11g now holds the TPC-C performance world record for all x86 systems, as well as an overall world record of 30,249,688 tpmC set by SPARC SuperCluster with T3-4 servers (price/performance - US$1.01/tpmC, available 6/1/11).

• Benchmark results

TPC Benchmark C, tpmC, and TPC-C are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). More information: http://www.tpc.org/tpcc, results as of 3/27/12.