FlashBack 1108: Cray CS6400 Breaks 100,000 SPECrate92 ===================================================== From: shahin@oregon.cray.com (Shahin Khan) The CRAY SUPERSERVER 6400 (CS6400) system has broken its previous fastest-ever records for the SPECrate92 standard benchmarks and the 100,000 rate barrier for these benchmarks with a 64- processor system, Cray Research Superservers (CRS) announced today. The SPECrate_int92 for a 64-processor CS6400 system was measured at 101,969 and SPECrate_fp92 at 129,843. The CS6400 is a symmetric multi-processing system that is completely SPARC/Solaris compliant. Systems are available with up to 16 gigabytes of memory, more than five terabytes of online storage, and up to 64 I/O channels. Media: Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538 Financial: Brad Allen, 612/683-7395 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cray Research Superservers Announces Barrier Breaking 100,000 Rate Performance on SPECrate92 Benchmarks with 64-Processor System CRAY SUPERSERVER 6400 Is First High-End System To Report All Numbers For Benchmark The CS6400 system, offered with up to 64 SuperSPARC Plus microprocessors, is the first high-end system to run and report all the SPECrate92 benchmarks, according to CRS officials. In June of this year, the SPECrate Council introduced two new measures for the benchmark -- baseline and optimized. The CS6400 system performed both measures on the SPECrate_int92 and SPECrate_fp92 for 48-processor, 56- processor and 64-processor system configurations. A complete chart of performance numbers appears at the end of this release. According to Martin Buchanan, CRS general manager, for the highest recorded performance rate for the CS6400 system, which was on the SPECrate_fp92 benchmark, the system had a scalability ratio of 59.4:1. This ratio means that a little more than four processors were required for overhead computing activity and all the remaining processors -- nearly 60 -- were focused on direct computation related to the problem, Buchanan said. "No other computer vendor has ever achieved this level of performance or scalability on this benchmark -- in fact, no other computer vendor has run this benchmark on such a large system," said Buchanan. "The scalability ratio is an important measure for customers and prospects in choosing a system that can grow with their organization's budgets and computing requirements." Buchanan noted that this ratio shows how efficiently the performance of the CS6400 system scales as processors are added. He said that these new benchmark results confirm that the CS6400 system is the fastest and most expandable SPARC/Solaris-compliant computer available today. "With these new SPECrate achievements, we now lead the industry even outside the SPARC and Solaris world," he said. The CS6400 system is available with 4 to 64 SuperSPARC processors at prices starting under $400,000 (U.S.). Shipments of systems with 64 processors began in June of this year, he said. An unnamed Asian bank was the first to install a 64-processor CS6400 system for use in financial derivatives simulation and data management. The CS6400 is a symmetric multi-processing system that is completely SPARC/Solaris compliant. Systems are available with up to 16 gigabytes of memory, more than five terabytes of online storage, and up to 64 I/O channels. Compilers used for the SPECrate92 benchmarks were from Apogee Software with Kuck and Associates parallelizing pre- processor, Buchanan noted. CRS, based here, is a subsidiary of Cray Research, Inc. (NYSE:CYR). Cray Research provides the leading high- performance computing tools and services to help solve customers' most challenging problems. Data warehousing, decision support, transaction processing and multimedia applications which challenge current technologies are the targets for Cray Research's new line of highly scalable CS6400 systems. The chart below gives detailed SPECrate performance information for the CS6400 system. Benchmark # of Processors Rating Scalability SPECrate_base_int92 48 75,275 43.5:1 56 82,851 47.9:1 64 92,844 54.7:1 SPECrate_int92 48 82,522 41.7:1 56 95,262 48.1:1 64 101,969 51.5:1 SPECrate_base_fp92 48 95,943 47.0:1 56 109,477 53.6:1 64 122,061 59.8:1 SPECrate_fp92 48 102,235 46.7:1 56 115,802 53.0:1 64 129,843 59.4:1 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Sun FlashBack - A Full-Text On Demand Newsletter John J. McLaughlin Publisher & Editor - flash@FlashBack.COM Subscriptions to Majordomo@FlashBack.COM Article Requests to flashback@FlashBack.COM Article Submissions to Flash@FlashBack.COM For a general introduction send email to Flashback@FlashBack.COM with 9001 in the Subject line. For the October 1994 table of contents make the Subject line: 70.00 1050 5013 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++