IBM Again Shatters World Record on Two-Tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark

256-core IBM Power 795 system with DB2 delivers higher performance than Oracle/Sun or HP systems

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Nov 16, 2010, 11:11 ET

ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that a 256-core Power® 795 system with DB2® nearly doubled last month's record to achieve the highest result ever published on the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark with a result of 126,063 SAP SD benchmark users. (1)

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The IBM system easily eclipsed Oracle/Sun results on the two-tier SAP SD standard application, handling more than three times the number of SAP SD users than a 256-core Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 (Oracle's largest system) (2) and the 128-core Oracle result on the two-tier SAP SD-Parallel standard application benchmark published in September running four clustered 32-core Sun Fire X4470 servers with Intel's Xeon X7560 chip. (3) The IBM benchmark is more than four times higher than HP's 128-core Integrity SD64B result (HP's largest) on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark. (4)

The 256-core POWER7™-based 795 running the AIX® 7.1 operating system, DB2 9.7 information management software and IBM System Storage also surpassed its own world record result on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark achieved last month on a 128-core Power 795 (5), demonstrating impressive 90 percent, near-linear scaling. The result is also the first to break the 500,000 SAPS (SAP Application Performance Standard) level on a single system with more than 688,000 SAPS, a measure of system throughput of business deliverables, such as customer sales orders or invoices.

"This outstanding result demonstrates once again the innovation and performance leadership of IBM POWER7 technology, Power Systems™ and DB2," said Jeff Howard, director, IBM Power Systems. "It nearly doubled the leading result achieved just a month ago on a 128-core system, demonstrating that Power and DB2 can scale to meet the exploding growth in data and data-creating devices. SAP applications are critical for businesses around the world in industries ranging from distribution to industrial to financial services, retail and more. As businesses reach more clients online -- and handle input from credit-card readers, RFID tags, smart energy meters and other devices -- the combination of Power 795 and DB2 running SAP applications can scale to help meet their growth requirements."

Power 795

The IBM Power 795 can support up to 256 cores. When using the latest optional PowerVM™ virtualization software, it allows customers to run more than 1,000 virtual servers on a single physical system, enabling a substantial improvement in operating efficiency and levels of server, storage and network virtualization. This allows customers running SAP applications to consolidate onto fewer servers - or even a single Power 795 - vastly simplifying their infrastructure and reducing costs in data center floor space, energy, management resources, and database and web application software.

Throughout 2010, IBM has filled out its POWER7 lineup of workload optimizing systems, all of which are now available and shipping to customers. These new systems are redefining performance to help businesses deploy services faster, with higher quality, and with superior economics. These are the measures of performance that clients are using to achieve breakthrough agility, a foundation for growth and risk management, and to do more with less as budgets continue to tighten. IBM's ongoing investment in research and development and experience through thousands of customer engagements combine to deliver not only the record-breaking raw performance demonstrated by this new benchmark result, but also on these new measures of performance.

IBM Power Systems have recorded more than 100 industry-leading performance benchmark results. For more information on Power benchmark leadership and IBM workload optimized systems, please visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/benchmarks/ and http://www.ibm.com/systems/smarter.

FOOTNOTES

IBM is a trademark of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries licensed exclusively through The Open Group.

(1) Configuration and results of the IBM Power 795 on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark running SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode): 32 processors / 256 cores / 1,024 threads, POWER7, 4.0 GHz, 4,096 GB memory, 126,063 SAP SD benchmark users, 0.98 seconds dialog response time, 13,772,670 line items per hour, 41,318,000 dialog steps per hour, 688,630 SAPS, 0.011 seconds/0.024 seconds database response time (dialog/ update), 96 percent CPU utilization running AIX® 7.1 and DB2® 9.7. Certification #2010046. Results valid as of 11/15/2010.

(2) Configuration and results of the Sun SPARC Enterprise Server M9000 on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark running SAP ERP 6.0: 64 processors / 256 cores / 512 threads, 1,024 GB memory, 39,100 SAP SD benchmark users, SPARC64 VII, 2.52 GHz, Solaris 10, Oracle 10g, Certification # 2008042.

(3) Configuration and results of the Sun Fire X4470 on the two-tier SAP SD-Parallel standard application benchmark running SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode): 4 servers with 4 processors / 32 cores / 64 threads, 256 GB memory, 40,000 SAP SD benchmark users, Intel Xeon X7560, 2.26 GHz, Solaris 10, Oracle 11g Real Application Cluster (RAC). Certification number: 2010039.

(4) Configuration and results of the HP Integrity SD64B on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark running SAP ERP 6.0: 32 processors / 128 cores / 256 threads, 512 GB memory, 30,000 SAP SD benchmark users, Intel Itanium 2 9050, 1.6 GHz, HP-UX 11iV3, Oracle 10g, Certification # 2006089.

(5) Configuration and results of the IBM Power 795 on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark running SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application (Unicode): 16 processors / 128 cores / 512 threads, 2,048 GB memory, 70,032 SAP SD benchmark users, POWER7, 4.0 GHz, running AIX® 7.1 and DB2® 9.7. Certification #: 2010042.

For more details see http://www.sap.com/benchmark.