This presentation compares features and performance of IBM Informix 12.10 on IBM Power 7 and IBM Power 8, both runing POWERLINUX

1. Informix on IBM PowerLinux
Comparing Power7 and Power8
Eric Vercelletto
eric.vercelletto@begooden-it.com
1CELEBRATING 20 YEARS

2. Just in case: who am I?
– I dedicated the major part of my life to Informix
– I run Begooden IT Consulting , IBM ISV, exclusively
focused on Informix technology services.
– I am a member of the IIUG Board of Directors, and
president of the French LUG (GUIDE Share France
– groupe Informix)
– check my blogs
• http://www.vercelletto.com
http://levillageinformix.blogspot.com (in french)
2

3. Agenda
3

4. Big concentration on hardware
platforms since the 90’s
– In general, all those brands had a distinct home-made
architecture, some exceptions based on Intel.
– Many of those makers have disappeared or been
acquired by existing or emerging makers.
– The Intel architecture has gained a strong momentum
(Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc…)
– Some home made architecture appeared on the
playfield: IBM PowerPC, Oracle/Sun Sparc
– Others have simply disappeared (HP-PA, MIPS, Alpha,
Motorola)
4

5. 80-90’s: many actors
on the servers market
5

6. 80-90’s: existing CPU technologies

7. The CPU marketplace today

8. Who is on the market today

9. The market recent evolution

10. IBM Power Architecture is a major player
– The Power PC RISC chip has been released by 1992
– Since then it has constantly been improved. Starting with Power3 models,
we are now at Power 8.
– IBM Power architecture has more cache, more threads and more
bandwidth than any existing Intel architecture, this makes the difference
– Performance, reliability, scalability are key advantages that have made the
success of Power in business critical implementations
10
2004 2007 2010 2014
POWER7/7+
45/32 nm
POWER8
22 nm
POWER6/6+
65/65 nmPOWER5/5+
130/90 nm

11. Power Architecture is Purpose Built
11

12. IBM POWER8 : “Design Objectives”
12
12
- More Core / More Threads
- Stronger Perf. / thread
- Higher Data Bandwidth
- Higher IO Bandwith
- “Open HW Accelerator”
Design for :
Cloud
Open Innovation to
put data to work
Analytics InnovationTraditional-IT
+

13. Few Interesting Facts About Linux
13
Linux is the world’s fastest growing Operating System
• Over 90% of world’s fastest supercomputers, run on Linux
• 8 of the world’s top 10 websites run on Linux (Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter)
• 80% of All Stock Exchanges in the world rely on Linux
• 95% of the servers used by Hollywood animation films run on Linux
• US Department of Defense is the "single biggest install base for Red Hat Linux" in the world
Enterprise Linux is growing with new types of workloads
• Big Data, Analytics and Cognitive Computing
IBM is focused on providing a NEW winning solution:
Linux on Power Systems

14. The LINUX History – a Mature Operating System

15. Linux is constantly gaining respect in many companies
– Linux is always a very good alternative to Windows servers, for reliability,
availability and budget reasons
– Linux is frequently used in horizontal scalable architectures like Hadoop,
MongoDB etc…
– Linux SAdmin are easy to find: Linux is part of all the universities curriculum
15
– But … Linux on x86 is not globally recognized as the most trusted
combination for critical implementations, because of x86 platform.

16. IBM Power Systems delivers:
•Dynamic efficiency, with intelligent,
workload-based resource allocation
•Business analytics—optimized
for big data and compute-intensive
applications
•Enhanced reliability and availability
Linux delivers:
•Rich opportunities for innovation
and enablement of new workloads
•Significant cost savings
•Industry-leading flexibility and
performance
Linux on Power Systems
integrates these two powerful
technologies to deliver the
highest levels of:
•Efficiency
•Availability
•Security
•Reliability
•Scalability
•Cost savings
Linux on Power Systems combines the unparalleled performance of
Power with the open innovation and cost effectiveness of Linux.

17. and Linux distributions support
• Distro officially supported by IBM (with software maintenance)
• Distro supported by community helped by IBM (fully functional)
• Distro with ppc64 version but limited support* (“may work” on Power servers)
* Kernel not optimized for IBM Power Server, No PowerLinux Tools available
Enterprise
Dev. / Solution
Experiment

18. IBM PowerLinux + Informix:
best match for business critical implementations
– IBM Power has a strong reputation for reliability and performance
– IBM Informix has a strong reputation for reliability and performance
– Many business critical applications run very successfully on this
combination
• Biggest retailer in the world (USA)
• Chinese government
• Biggest entertainment parks in the world(USA,France,Asia)
• Biggest online games company (UK, Ireland)
• Many Bank Assurance companies
• Healthcare
• And many more ( check in the conference rooms  )
– IBM PowerLinux is just as robust and fast as IBM Power AIX AND:
• Servers pricing are aggressive against x86 Servers and IBM Power/AIX
• Informix pricing is more aggressive against x86 of same range
• Linux is cheaper in terms of staffing
18

19. Now, wake up for some
19

20. Define the benchmark
20
 Objective: compare performance and system behavior of IBM Informix 12.10 FC2
between a Power 7/PowerLinux Server and a Power8/PowerLinux Server
 Both servers alternatively connected to same storage rack
 Same OS version (RedHat Power 6.4)
 Same binaries
 Same Informix (12.10FC2)
 Same data
 Power7 has 16 cores
 Power8 has 15 cores (this was a pre-release server)
 Methodology: use homebrewed TPC-C benchmark running on the server, and
compare results between Power7 setting and Power8
 Compare data load times
 Compare tpm/C evolution as the number of users grows
 Determine efficiency of hyperthreading
 Specific conditions: the application binaries and the Informix Server run on the same
machine.

21. The IBM Architecture (Power750 & S824)
Kindly provided by IBM Montpellier Client Center

22. Comparing tpc-c data load time
22
• Load 300 TPC Warehouses,
• that is data for 3000 users
• One process, running in ‘express’ mode, i.e. using raw tables and prepared inserts
• Same code, same IFMX configuration file, same storage
03:25
01:56:29
00:00
00:28
00:57
01:26
01:55
02:24
02:52
03:21
03:50
1
Data load time
300 Warehouses
POWER7
POWER8

23. Comparing tpc-c one user
23
Run TPC-C, 1 warehouse, 1 user. All parameters similar, same storage
4 597
7 293
11 032
9302
13394
15727
0
2 000
4 000
6 000
8 000
10 000
12 000
14 000
16 000
18 000
min avg max
tpcc 1 user
results in tpmC
Power7
Power8

24. Comparing tpc-c 500 users
• Run tpc-c for 50 warehouses 10 users, same
config
24
76 153
83 782
96 503
126860
145453
152485
0
20 000
40 000
60 000
80 000
100 000
120 000
140 000
160 000
180 000
min avg max
tpc-c 500 users
results in tpmC
Power7
Power8

25. Comparing tpc-c 800 users
• Run tpc-c for 80 warehouses 10 users, same config
25
66 933
77 487
90 770
113396
118243
123753
0
20 000
40 000
60 000
80 000
100 000
120 000
140 000
min avg max
tpc-c 800 users
results in tpmC
Power7
Power8

26. Comparing best tpc-c obtained
before system optimization
• This graph displays the best tpmC obtained respectively
on Power7 and Power8 with the same configuration
• Best results for P7 is obtained with 500 users
• Best results for P8 is obtained with 600 users
26
96 503
128344
0
20 000
40 000
60 000
80 000
100 000
120 000
140 000
Power7 Power8
Best tpmC with identical configuration
tpmC

27. Going for maximum performance
with further IFMX optimization
27
• Tpcc-c runs on only 9 tables, which results in a strong contention on
memory and disk IO, generating buffer waits in IFMX
• To eliminate this performance issue, we will fragment the tables and
indexes so that IO and buffer access do not generate a bottleneck
• From now on, we will no more compare results with P7 but show how
far we can go

28. Fragmenting the tables and indexes
a significant performance gain
28
126 860 128 344
123 753
152 485
162 370
158 125
0
20 000
40 000
60 000
80 000
100 000
120 000
140 000
160 000
180 000
500 users 600 users 700 uers
Gain with tables and index fragmentation
NoFragment
Fragment

29. Good resistance to
users number increase
29
1400
2000
3000
178 664 171 169 157 644
1
10
100
1000
10000
100000
1000000
1 2 3
Resistance to users increase
Users
tpmC

30. Setting SMT on Power7
• We did some tests on Power7 with SMT,
namedly SMT=4, but could not conclude in a
real enhancement and did not proceed
further
• Best performance has been achieved with
SMT = 2 ( i.e. 2 threads per core )
• After discussion, IBM Engineering states that
P8 handles threads multiplication per core
much more efficiently than P7
30

31. POWER8 Multi-threading Options
31
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
P7
SMT1
P8
SMT1
P8
SMT2
P8
SMT4
P8
SMT8
• SMT1: Largest unit of execution work
• SMT2: Smaller unit of work, but provides
greater amount of execution work per cycle
• SMT4: Smaller unit of work, but provides
greater amount of execution work per cycle
• SMT8: Smallest unit of work, but provides
the maximum amount of execution work
per cycle
• Can dynamical shift between modes as
required: SMT1 / SMT2 / SMT4 / SMT8
• Mixed SMT modes supported within same
LPAR
– Requires use of “Resource Groups”

32. Setting SMT on Power8
• Increasing SMT on P8, correlated with increasing CPU
vp #, is a game changer and provides important gains
in performance
32
49 542
85 391
104 687
164 230
179 838
107 605
149 580 155 023
179 569
204 947
0
50 000
100 000
150 000
200 000
250 000
400 600 800 1200 1600
Impact of SMT setting
SMT2
SMT4

33. Best Performance overall
• The best tpmC obtained in that benchmark is
264.162 tpmC
With 500 users
On IBM Power S824
Smt=4
32 cpu VPs
33

34. Conclusions
• PowerLinux is technically a great platform for business
critical applications
– Robust: IBM Power designed for mission-critical
– Fast: IBM Power designed for performance
– Scalalable: PowerVM offers great flexibility
– Easy to administrate: today everyone knows linux
• Power8 offers higher level of performance
– for the cost of an Intel Server
– For a TCO that is really a challenge for same range Intel
platforms
– PVU price is cheaper on PowerLinux than on Intel
• Informix runs great on PowerLinux
• More to come later….
34

35. Thank you
• IBM Montpellier Client Center Team:
• Fabrice Moyen, Sébastien Chabrolles, Marie-Line
Reygnier, Christophe Cavelier, Laurent Revel
• IBM Lenexa: Vladimir Kholobrodov
• Gonçalo Ruivo (the surfer on the front picture)
35

36. Informix on IBM PowerLinux
Comparing Power7 and Power8
Questions?
Eric Vercelletto
eric.vercelletto@begooden-it.com
36