The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server was put to the test by InfoWorld's Paul Venezia, who attributes the performance of this server to the UltraSPARC T2 processor, a single CPU running four, six or eight cores. Among the improvements in the UltraSPARC T2 are increased bandwidth to mainline I/O, decreased latency, core-specific memory controllers, FPU, cryptographic accelerator, and 4MB L2 cache, plus x8 PCle and two 10G Ethernet controllers, all of which reside on a single CPU die. Each of the eight discrete cores, Venezia writes, is positioned to support eight concurrent threads and a clock speed of 1.4 GHz. To top things off, the CPU uses a mere 95 watts and looks to the OSD like 64 CPUs.

Off the starting blocks, Venezia pronounces the T2 processor a clear choice for highly threaded applications but not a good candidate for single-threaded applications. His candidate system arrived with 64GB of RAM, four copper GB Ethernet ports, two USB 2.0 ports, three PCI-E slots, serial and Ethernet service processor connections and redundant power supplies. The four possible 2.5 inch 10K RPM SAS drives give the T5120 possibilities as a storage server as well as a compute server, especially when used with Solaris Containers.

Venezia wasn't happy with the T5120's integrated lights-out manager (ILOM), which he found "Byzantine" to use on both the web and SSH interfaces, though updated firmware improved that performance somewhat.

On web and database work, the T5120 proved itself a good performer, Venezia found, and the server was as happy with the Ubuntu 7.10 SPARC release as with the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS), though some of the optimizations for the T2 processor available in the Solaris OS resulted in better FPU and cryptographic performance, he found.

Summing up, Venezia wrote, "Overall, the UltraSPARC T2 and the T5120 build upon the hallmarks of the first-generation UltraSPARC T1-based servers, and remind us that although the SPARC CPU may have been marginalized in recent years, it hasn't surrendered, and may in fact be making a comeback." [...read more...]

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