Red Hat Delivers Leading Application Performance with the Latest Intel Xeon Processors

With every new Intel Xeon processor generation, the benefits typically span beyond simple increases in transistor counts or the number of cores within each processor. Things like increased memory capacity per chip or larger on-chip caches are tangible and measurable, and often have a direct effect on performance, resulting in record-breaking scores on various standard benchmarks.

There is, however, more to every new processor family launch than meets the eye. These new chips often send a ripple of innovation throughout our ecosystem of partners, forcing them to re-evaluate and re-visit existing performance results and break the status quo. The ability to support these partners is of paramount importance to Red Hat and, as a result, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is often being selected by our partners to support their ongoing benchmarking efforts.

Yesterday, Intel launched the Intel Xeon E7 v3 processor family with several new world record industry-standard benchmarks. Red Hat Enterprise Linux was used in nearly one-third of all results. The following table captures these leading results

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Source: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/benchmarks/server/xeon-e7-v3/xeon-e7-v3-world-record.html

The long standing history of collaboration between Red Hat and Intel enabled Red Hat Enterprise Linux to become the platform of choice for several Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) that need to execute demanding enterprise workloads across physical, virtual, or cloud installations. Specifically, out of 20 world record benchmark results posted by six different OEM partners, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was used in six, surpassing Microsoft Windows. The following chart visualizes this adoption.

Additionally, over the past two years the industry adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running and publishing standard benchmarks, covering workloads that range from compute-intensive technical computing problems to enterprise virtualization, continues to grow. As the chart below demonstrates, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was used in 83 percent of SPEC CPU2006 and 67 percent of SPECvirt_sc2013 benchmark publications between February of 2013 and February of 2015 [1].

One of the six record-breaking results on the Intel Xeon E7 v3 processor family set by Red Hat Enterprise Linux demonstrates how an OS platform can handle the rigors of enterprise-class applications, all while scaling nicely as additional hardware resources are being added. We’re excited to report that a new world-record for all four processor systems was achieved on the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark. Another long standing Red Hat partner, Dell, deployed Dell PowerEdge R930 server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and SAP enhancement package 5 for the SAP ERP application Release 6.0 with SAP Adaptive Server® Enterprise (SAP ASE) 16 to deliver this record result [2]. Notably, this complements the standing world-record 2-processor result achieved on the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark using Dell PowerEdge R730 server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and SAP enhancement package 5 for the SAP ERP application Release 6.0 with SAP Adaptive Server® Enterprise (SAP ASE) 16 [3].

The above chart demonstrates that when it comes to ERP applications, Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers industry-leading scalability of almost 90 percent when going from dual to quad processor configuration while still maintaining excellent performance. This benchmark is a proof point that shows that Red Hat Enterprise Linux excels at handling scalable workloads and thrives in ever-changing environments, as enterprise customers place ever increasing demands on their infrastructure.

This recent set of performance records on Intel Xeon E7 v3 family of processors reinforces Red Hat’s continued commitment of delivering choice, value, and innovation to our customers and partners that require a stable platform to extract top performance from their infrastructure.

[1] Results as of March 2nd, 2015. Based on the data collected for two calendar years (from 02/2013 to 02/2015) using the following public resources: SPEC CPU2006: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/. SPECvirt_sc2013: http://www.spec.org/virt_sc2013/results/

[2] Dell PowerEdge R930 server results on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark: 31,000 SAP SD benchmark users, 170,030 SAPS, 4 processors/72 cores/144 threads, Intel Xeon Processor E7-8890 v3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1, SAP ASE 16, SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0. Certification number 2015012.

[3] Dell PowerEdge R730 server results on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark: 16,500 SAP SD benchmark users, 90,120 SAPS, 2 processors/36 cores/72 threads, Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, SAP ASE 16, SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0. Certification number 2014033.