TPC’s Benchmarks Under Development:

Preview Slide DeckMay 4, 2009

Presented by:Karl Huppler, Chairman of the TPC

Mike Nikolaiev, Chairman of the TPC-Energy Specification CommitteeRaghu Nambiar, General Chair of the TPC TC

1

Agenda• TPC mission and background• TPC Technology Conference on Performance Evaluation and

Benchmarking (TPC TC) • Metrics Under Development:

• TPC-ETL (Not included for purposes of this interview)• TPC-Energy

• Meeting industry demand• Price, performance and power• Energy and SUT• Energy Measuring System (EMS)• Summary

• Backup

2

TPC Mission and Background

• The TPC is a non-profit corporation founded to define transaction processing benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable performance data to the industry

• Established in August 1988 by 8 leading software and hardware companies

• 4 available benchmarks• TPC-C: Online transaction processing (distribution centers)• TPC-E: Online transaction processing (brokerage)• TPC-H: Decision support for ad hoc queries• TPC-App: Business-to-business transactional Web services

workload

3

Co-located with VLDB 2009August 24, 2009

Lyon, France

The TPC Technology Conference on Performance

Evaluation and Benchmarking (TPC TC)

4

TPC TC: Overview

• The first TPC Technology Conference on Performance Evaluation & Benchmarking (TPC TC) will be held on August 24 in Lyon, France

• TPC TC is a continuation of the TPC’s 20th anniversary workshop series

• The TPC TC is open to IT managers, end users, server vendors and customers

• Co-located with the 35th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB)

• Keynote: Michael Stonebraker

5

TPC TC: Benchmarks in 2010 and beyond

• Current call for papers to help guide long-term benchmark development:

6

• Appliance• Business Intelligence• Cloud computing• Complex event processing• Database performance optimizations• Green computing• Data compression• Disaster tolerance and recovery

• Energy and space efficiency • Hardware innovations • High speed data generation • Hybrid workloads or operational data warehousing• Unstructured data management • Software management and maintenance • Virtualization • Very large memory systems

• Select papers will be presented at the TPC TC, published in workshop materials and considered in future benchmark developments

TPC’s Energy Specification

7

• TPC’s Energy Specification subcommittee was formed in December 2007, and the following slides illustrate the organization’s work-to-date and current direction

• This information is not intended to represent the final benchmark• As benchmark development matures, further prototype and analysis work may

alter the TPC’s direction

Energy Spec: Meeting industry demand

• In the past, performance and price/performance were the key criteria in data center purchasing decisions

• Energy efficiency has become another significant factor in evaluating computing hardware

• To date, the TPC has developed nine distinct benchmarks, each according to industry demand

• The Energy Specification is a continuation of the TPC’s work over the past two decades

• The Energy Specification will supplement the TPC’s existing benchmarks

• It will not be a stand-alone benchmark

8

Energy Spec: Calls for standardized metrics• Energy efficiency in the data center has become one of the top concerns for IT

managers

9

“As the cost of power grows significantly, the application of energy efficiency to systems performance becomes a metric that cannot be ignored.”- IBM, Oct. 2007

“The EPA is working with interested parties to identify ways in which energy efficiency can be measured, documented and implemented in data centers and the equipment they house, especially servers.“- EPA, 2009

“Data centers perform computing functions vital to the U.S. economy, yet they require large amounts of energy to operate. To support the growing demand for processing power throughout the nation, data centers are using ever more compact and energy-intensive servers—even as the total number and size of data centers continues to increase. This is creating a serious burden on the U.S. electric grid.”-U.S. Department of Energy, April 2009

“The energy consumed by high-tech industries and institutions represents an attractive and often untapped opportunity for energy savings. Characterized by large base-loads operating 24 hours a day with energy intensities much larger than typical commercial buildings, high-tech buildings include laboratories, cleanrooms, and data centers.”-Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2009

• Metrics that measure the application of energy efficiency against systems price and performance are needed

Price, performance and power consumption• The three most important criteria in IT purchases include:

• Performance• Price• Energy consumption

• Today’s complex IT environment demands that price and energy be put in perspective of the performance.

• Customers are increasingly requiring that price/performance and energy/performance be provided for IT purchasing decisions.

10

TPC Benchmark Metrics

0

20

40

60

80

100

Performance

Price /Performance

Energy /Performance

Energy and SUT

11

• A System Under Test (SUT) should be similar to a typical customer installation rather than highly tuned and customized to run a specific benchmark

• The TPC Energy Spec helps manufacturers provide energy usage measurements, which mirror what an average user of a given system will experience

• The metric requires components of the SUT to be commercially available• The physical environment in which the test is conducted must also be

comparable to a typical business setting including:• Temperature, humidity, and altitude

Benchmark System Under Test (SUT)

• The EMS is an online software package designed to help manufacturers reduce the cost and difficulty of implementing the TPC Energy Specification

• The EMS will provide services like power instrumentation interfacing, power and temperature logging, report generation and more

• The EMS will be accessible via the TPC’s Web site• Customers will be able to easily identify how to save money while

reducing energy consumption

12

Energy Measuring System (EMS)

Energy Specification Summary

• The TPC’s Energy Specification is a continuation of ongoing efforts to meet the needs of a rapidly changing industry

• Customers will be able to go to the TPC Web site to identify systems that meet their price, performance and energy requirements

• Systems that use less energy also have reduced cooling requirements

• Direct relationship between power usage and heat generation

13

Backup

14

TPC: Providing the Most Credible Benchmarks in the Industry

• TPC is the only organization that provides consistent price-performance scores

• All tests require full documentation of the components and applications under test, so that the test can be replicated

• The TPC requires an independent audit of results prior to publication

• TPC tests the whole system performance, not just one piece

• TPC is database-agnostic: Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, ParAccel, Exasol and others

• TPC provides cross-platform performance comparisons, a view of processor vs. real performance, technology comparisons and actual cost of performance comparisons

15

The TPC Today• Volume of published TPC results continues to rise• 25 Full Members companies

• 3 Associate Member companies

16