AMD Opteron 248 vs. Intel Xeon 2.8: 2-way Web Servers go Head to Head
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Jason Clark on December 17, 2003 9:15 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
The Evolution of the Web Server
Web servers have evolved over the years from the traditional static delivery model to the dynamic model common to present web architecture. The static model was basically static text files with all of the web content pre-authored and ready for client delivery. Today, most web architectures are much more complex.Present architecture usually consists of a web server, application server and a back-end database server. In most cases, the application server resides on the same physical machine as the web server (two-tier architecture), but in some cases, the Application server resides on its own physical machine (three-tier architecture). The web server’s job is to deliver the content that is generated by the application server to the client. The application server either interprets code or executes compiled code written by the developer and hands it off to the web server for client delivery. As you can guess, the web architecture of today is much more strenuous on hardware as it has to actually work to deliver web content to the client instead of just spitting out HTML files.
There are numerous application servers used in today’s web applications. AnandTech uses Macromedia ColdFusion MX, which is simply a language that runs on top of a J2EE server (Macromedia JRUN in our case). J2EE is a Java based runtime platform that Sun Microsystems created, which allows developers to create enterprise level applications and deploy those applications on a standards based platform. Because of our familiarity and the fact that J2EE is a popular industry standard application server, we chose it for our web tests.
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Superbike - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
CRAMITPAL right as always!Jeff7181 - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
You'd think some people here have a huge investment in AMD the way they touch their balls every time AMD comes out ahead in a benchmark.Anyway, it's nice to see some benchmarks that clearly show what AMD processors are capable of... only other thing I'd like to see is the cost of the configurations used. That would even extend AMD's "lead."
morcegovermelho - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
Ooops...The last sentence should be read as:
try in calculator 141 + 82.3%. The result is 257,043.
morcegovermelho - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
quote:"The Opteron 248 setup managed to outperform Intel’s fastest, largest cache Xeon MP by a whopping 45%"
I think the number should be 82,3%.
If the Opteron was twice as fast (100% faster) as the Xeon the Average Request Time would be half of 257ms (128.5ms). The Opteron Average Request Time is 141ms (82% faster than Xeon).
Try in calculator: 141 + 82%. The result is 257,043.
Shinei - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
The message is clear: Opteron wins, flawless victory. Now if only I could AFFORD a 248 setup... ;)RZaakir - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
"it would of been nice to have taken out a singnal(sic) opteron also so(sic) see 1x proformance."Knowing how well Opteron chips scale, this was probably a decision made out of mercy for Intel.
Nehemoth - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
Awesomedvinnen - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
it would of been nice to have taken out a singnal opteron also so see 1x proformance.jerkweed - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
Quote: Intel was not very receptive to the idea of doing a head-to-head; not out of a fear of losing, but out of a desire not to lend AMD any credibility by showing that the Opteron is indeed a competitor to the Itanium 2.That might be what Intel told AT, but honestly, Intel is terrified of seeing a head-to-head benchmark for an application like this. Itanium/Itanium 2 (known by most HPC/64-bit gearheads as 'Itanic') will show numbers much slower than even their Xeons for a web benchmark. The vast majority of all web-server cpu usage is INT specific... look at the numbers for spec INT yourself:
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q4/
Falco. - Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - link
all i can say is damn...can't wait for that 4 way shootout and the opteron vs itanium test ...