From: Green, Simon (SGreen@KRAFTEUROPE.COM)
Date: Mon Nov 04 2002 - 13:26:58 EST
From: Holger.VanKoll@SWISSCOM.COM [mailto:Holger.VanKoll@SWISSCOM.COM]
Sent: 04 November 2002 17:48
>> Clock speed is of very limited...
> Sure, no doubt.
> AFAIK intel reduced the number of pipelines in the pentium4 just to be
able to
> run it at a higher clockspeed.
> I would not expect IBM to do something similar, however.
IBM play marketing games as much as anyone. However, the UNIX server market
seems to be more driven by benchmarks.
> For a DB application, I/O speed is probably more important than CPU power.
> Yes, but is there anything io-speed related (fc-adapters, disks etc.) that
> I can buy for a p4 but not for a p3?
> If there is any io bottleneck, cpu-speed is of course not important
anymore.
> But (here) there isnt.
It's not something you can buy extra, but the P4's have much more cache,
which should improve all I/O, including that to memory. There may be a
faster I/O
bus, but that will depend on the particular model.
> You'd do better to find a benchmark...
> Thats a big part of the problem. All IBM gives to you is rperf.
You might find this useful, if you haven't seen it already:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/system_perf.html
It's not detailed, but it gives benchmarks for a wide range of pSeries
boxes.
<SNIP>
> Anyway, if you offer systems (especially when upgrading from older
ibm-systems)
> non-technician decisionmakers see mhz and ask questions.
> In a perfect world they wouldnt - meanwhile it would be nice if I could
give a
> short explanation of this high-clockspeed needs.
I think you're out of luck there! You could try mentioning some of the
older
chips to indicate the irrelevance of clock-speed. e.g. Any Power III chip
is way faster than any Pentium, despite lower clock speed. But that will
depend on what
servers you can mention. (I recently shifted two SAP systems onto a single
Winterhawk node and the users were delighted with the performance increase.
Yet
most of them have "faster" CPUs in their PCs!)
Simon Green
Philip Morris ITSC Europe
AIX-L Archive at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=aix-l&r=1&w=2
AIX FAQ at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/aix-faq/
N.B. Unsolicited email from vendors will seldom be appreciated.
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