NEC AzuzA Server Breaks 500,000 TPM Barrier with Windows 2003

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As part of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 announcements last week, NEC will roll out benchmark tests on its future 32-way "AzuzA" Express5800/1320Xc server using the "Madison" 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 processors running Windows 2003. This machine cranked through the 500,000 transactions per minute (TPM) barrier on the TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark test and has the distinction of being the first Windows-based single system image to do so--though it certainly will not the last to do so.

That NEC machine sported 32 of the forthcoming Madison Itanium 2 chips, which have 6 MB of L3 cache compared to the 3 MB of L3 cache on the McKinley chips. The server under test was equipped with a whopping 512 GB of main memory and a stunning 41 TB of disk capacity. The core server cost $2.2 million (including the cost of the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition), with disk subsystems costing another $2.9 million. Including a 64-bit SQL Server 2000 license for all the processors and three years of maintenance, the NEC setup cost $7.2 million, and an NEC large systems discount of 20 percent dropped the total price to just under $6 million. With 514,035 TPM of throughput, that gave the Madison-based AzuzA machine a price/performance of $11.50 per TPM.

This performance falls a little bit short of the 600,000 TPM to 650,000 TPM level that some had been expecting for the AzuzA boxes using the Madison chips and Windows Server 2003, but this may be a reflection of the relative newness of the Microsoft operating system. But this does make a Windows box the most powerful machine tested on the TPC-C benchmark to date. Other machines, in theory, may have more power, but they have not been tested and therefore it is not proven.

Only two months ago, NEC rolled out a killer benchmark on the same machine using the "McKinley" 1 GHz Itanium 2s, clocking 433,108 TPM at a cost of $12.98 per TPM. This machine had roughly the same configuration.

Another interesting bit in the NEC TPC-C results are the availability dates. NEC says that its AzuzA server using the 1.5 GHz Madisons will be available on August 11, but says that the complete configuration will not ship until October 22. That would suggest that Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition will not be ready for prime time until then on Itanium.

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