News
HP Benchmarks Itanium 2 Servers
- By Scott Bekker
- July 17, 2002
Hewlett-Packard racked up some records on standard business benchmarks using its new servers built on the Itanium 2 processor, the Limited Edition of Windows Advanced Server and beta code of 64-bit SQL Server.
Industry standard benchmarks did not appear for Intel's first 64-bit processor, the Itanium. HP helped Intel develop the Itanium Architecture and was the first vendor to announce available systems based on the Itanium 2.
On the standard benchmark for OLTP database work, the Transaction Processing Performance Council's TPC-C, the HP-Microsoft combo set new performance marks for all 4-processor server systems and 2-processor server systems.
A configuration anchored by a 4-way HP rx5670 server running Limited Edition and 64-bit SQL, achieved 78,454 transactions per minute (tpmC) on the benchmark at a cost of $5.12 per tpmC. The result was 42 percent better than the previous best 4-way result, achieved on a 32-bit Windows-SQL system.
A similarly outfitted HP rx2600 2-way server achieved 40,621 tpmC at $5.72/tpmC -- an 18 percent improvement over the next best system.
HP also benchmarked its rx5670 on the SAP R/3 Sales & Distribution two-tier benchmark, achieving the best 4-way result on that measure. That test was also run using Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition 1.2 and the SQL Server 64-bit beta.
The Limited Edition is a fully supported operating system that can be purchased only from OEMs selling complete 64-bit systems, such as HP. The operating system was built using Windows .NET Server code.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.