AMD Shanghai Opteron: Linux vs. OpenSolaris Benchmarks

AMD Shanghai Opteron: Linux vs. OpenSolaris Benchmarks

Published on February 09, 2009
Written by Michael Larabel
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In January we published a review of the AMD Shanghai Opteron CPUs on Linux when we looked at four of the Opteron 2384 models. The performance of these 45nm quad-core workstation/server processors were great when compared to the earlier AMD Barcelona processors on Ubuntu Linux, but how is their performance when running Sun's OpenSolaris operating system? Up for viewing today are dual AMD Shanghai benchmarks when running OpenSolaris 2008.11, Ubuntu 8.10, and a daily build of the forthcoming Ubuntu 9.04 release.

The AMD Opteron 2384 is clocked at 2.70GHz and for more information on the benefits of the Shanghai processors, read our article from last month. For this testing we used the Tyan Thunder n3600M motherboard once again with 4GB of Corsair DDR2-667 ECC Registered memory, 160GB Western Digital WD1600YS-01SHB1 Serial ATA hard drive, and a NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX 512MB graphics card. The operating systems up for testing were OpenSolaris 2008.11, Ubuntu 8.10 x86_64, and an Ubuntu 9.04 x86_64 daily spin from 2009-01-28.

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To recap the Ubuntu 8.10 packages, it ships with the Linux 2.6.27 kernel, GNOME 2.24.1, X Server 1.5.2, GCC 4.3.2, and was using the EXT3 file-system. Our build of Ubuntu 9.04 was depending upon the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, GNOME 2.25.5, X Server 1.6.0 RC 1, GCC 4.3.3, and we opted to use the EXT4 file-system. OpenSolaris 2008.11 is based upon Solaris Nevada Build 101b, uses the 5.11 kernel with X Server 1.3, GCC 3.4.3, and the ZFS file-system. During all operating system testing we were using the NVIDIA 180.22 display driver.

All tests on Ubuntu Linux and OpenSolaris were run through the Phoronix Test Suite. The tests we chose to run that were compatible with both Linux and OpenSolaris were LAME MP3 encoding, Ogg encoding, timed PHP compilation, 7-Zip compression, Gzip compression, GnuPG, OpenSSL, GraphicsMagick, BYTE Unix Benchmark, SQLite, Sunflow Rendering System, Bork File Encrypter, and Java SciMark.

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In our first two tests, LAME MP3 encoding and Ogg encoding, Ubuntu 8.10 was the fastest operating system. Ubuntu 9.04 was running slightly slower than the Intrepid Ibex, but in both encoding instances OpenSolaris 2008.11 was running much slower. OpenSolaris 2008.11 had required significantly more time at encoding the audio files -- over 60% longer in the case of the Ogg test.

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Ubuntu 8.10 was faster than Ubuntu 9.04 by a very small amount, but again OpenSolaris 2008.11 was last at the timed PHP compilation. OpenSolaris 2008.11 is using the older GCC 3.4.3 version compared to Ubuntu using the latest GCC 4.3 branch, but OpenSolaris was just running a few seconds slower.

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The late January build of Ubuntu 9.04 took its first win with 7-Zip compression. The average number of MIPS was much greater on Ubuntu 9.04. In fact, the difference between Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04 is greater than the difference between OpenSolaris 2008.11 and Ubuntu 8.10.

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While Ubuntu 9.04 was the fastest at 7-Zip compression, it lost to Ubuntu 8.10 at Gzip compression by a fifth of a second. OpenSolaris 2008.11 remained in last.

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The Jaunty Jackalope returned to first place with GnuPG file encryption where it beat out Ubuntu 8.10 by less than a second, but OpenSolaris 2008.11 had trailed both Linux operating systems by 14 seconds.

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Ubuntu 9.04 (2009-01-28) with the Linux 2.6.28 kernel was the fastest contender for the OpenSSL RSA 4096-bit benchmark. Ubuntu 9.04 had the greatest number of signs per second followed by Ubuntu 8.10 and then OpenSolaris 2008.11 was just behind that. The performance difference between Ubuntu 9.04 and OpenSolaris 2008.11 was just under 1.5%.

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While OpenSolaris 2008.11 lagged behind Canonical's Intrepid and Jaunty releases in the benchmarks shown already, with the GraphicsMagick test the Sun operating system was absolutely slaughtered. Both versions of Ubuntu had performed many times faster than OpenSolaris with GraphicsMagick, which uses the OpenMP library for being very multi-core friendly.

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In our two other GraphicsMagick tests, OpenSolaris continued to be decimated. OpenSolaris is not performing well with this eight-core system powered by two of AMD's "Shanghai" Opteron processors.

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OpenSolaris 2008.11 lost again with the BYTE Unix Benchmark test, but not by a significant margin.

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At the SQLite benchmark, Ubuntu 8.10 performed the 12,500 database insertions in almost half the time it took OpenSolaris 2008.11. Ubuntu 9.04 results were not available for this run.

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OpenSolaris 2008.11 failed again. Sunflow is the first Java powered test in this article.

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OpenSolaris 2008.11 won again with Bork File Encrypter, another Java powered test. Ubuntu 9.04 was ahead of Ubuntu 8.10, but OpenSolaris 2008.11 had a strong first place finish. Seeing OpenSolaris finish strong in these Java powered tests should not be much of a surprise considering that Java and OpenSolaris are both products of Sun Microsystems.

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While OpenSolaris on this eight-core AMD system was faster at the Java-powered Bork File Encrypter test, it receded when it came to Java SciMark 2.0. Java SciMark 2.0 showed that Ubuntu 9.04 had the best FFT, Monte Carlo, and Composite performance while Ubuntu 8.10 had the best Successive Over Relaxation number.

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Back in November we delivered Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris vs. FreeBSD benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite. That test system was using the older AMD Barcelona processors, but there it showed OpenSolaris delivering weak performance as well in tests not utilizing Sun's Java stack. Of the 19 tests carried out today, OpenSolaris 2008.11 had just won one of them. In the rest of the tests, the fight was usually competitive between Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04 for the winning spot. In the end, Ubuntu 9.04 finished first in nine of the nineteen tests.

Discuss these results in the Phoronix Forums.

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