SAPS Olympics

As it’s clearly stated in the official site (http://sap.com/benchmark), the SAPS (SAP Application Performance Standard) is a hardware-independent unit of measurement that describes the performance of a system configuration in the SAP environment. Almost everyone in the computer system performance arena is aware of the SAPS, and indeed the SAPS has become a de facto standard measure of performance.

As I browse the SAPS list sometimes, I’ve decided that I’m putting the hat of objective journalist here and predigest the list for you. I don’t pretend to teach or comment anything else, at least by now. After reading this you may draw conclusions by yourself.

There are 774 official SAPS results posted at the public official site (SD 2-Tier) http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx. The first one dates back to 1996, a Siemens machine. The last benchmark corresponds to a HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9, with certification number 2014037, published last October 17^th.

For this analysis to be more relevant to you I have exclusively considered systems that have been measured with the latest benchmark specification: SAP Enhancement Package 5 for ERP 6.0 (SAP has not updated the benchmark environment to any newer versions EHP6 or EHP7). There are 75 such systems (as of Oct 20^th 2014), and the first one is a HP ProLiant BL465c Gen8, with certification number 2012026, published Jun 4^th 2012. So we are analyzing a little bit more than the last two years.

 

SAP Technology Partners

Which SAP Technology Partners (a SAP concept) have actively been benchmarking SAPS? Here are the results: Dell: 14, HP: 14, IBM: 14, Cisco Systems: 13, Fujitsu: 8, NEC: 4, Hitachi: 3, Oracle: 3, Stratus Technologies: 1, and Unisys: 1.

 

By CPU family

Count by CPU family type:  Intel Xeon: 58, IBM POWER: 9, AMD Opteron: 3, Oracle SPARC: 3, and Fujitsu SPARC64: 2.

 

By Operating System

Count by Operating System:  Windows Server: 41, Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 17, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: 5, IBM AIX: 7 and Solaris 11: 5.

 

By Relational Database Management System

Count by the Relational Database Management System? SQL Server: 36, SAP/Sybase ASE: 21, IBM DB2: 13, Oracle: 5.

 

Absolute Number Of SAPS (SAPS per System)

Gold: Fujitsu SPARC M10-4S 40 chips SPARC64 X @3000 MHz, (640 cores, 1280 threads): 844420 SAPS.

Silver: Oracle SPARC M6-32 32 chips SPARC M6 @3600 MHz (384 cores, 3072 threads): 793930 SAPS.

Bronze: Oracle SPARC Server M5-32 32 chips SPARCM5 @3600 MHz (192 cores, 1536 threads): 472600 SAPS.

The four first positions are held by Oracle and Fujitsu SPARC servers.

The last (which kind of medal does correspond to this?): Cisco UCS C240 M3 2 Intel Xeon Processor E5-2640 (12 cores, 24 threads) 24600 SAPS.

 

 

SAPS per core

Gold: IBM Power Enterprise System E870 with 8 chips POWER8 @4190 MHz (80 cores, 640 threads): 5451 SAPS/core.

Silver: IBM Power System S824 with 4 chips POWER8 @3520 MHz (24 cores, 192 threads): 4828 SAPS/core.

Bronze: IBM Flex System p260 Compute Node with 2 chips IBM POWER7+ @4100 MHz (16 cores, 64 threads): 3419 SAPS/core.

The nine first positions are held by IBM POWER servers. They are the absolute winners in this category!

Lowest: HP ProLiant BL465c Gen8 2  chips AMD Opteron 6278 @2400 MHz (32 cores, 32 threads): 864 SAPS/core.

 

SAPS per thread

Gold: Dell PowerEdge R730 with 2 Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3 @2300 MHz (36 cores, 72 threads): 1252 SAPS/thread.

Silver: HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 with 2 Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3 @2300 MHz (36 cores, 72 threads): 1221 SAPS/thread.

Bronze: Dell PowerEdge R730 with 2 Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3 @2300 MHz (36 cores, 72 threads): 1217 SAPS/thread.

The seven first positions are held by servers with Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3.

Lowest: Oracle SPARC Server T5-8 8 chips SPARC T5 @3600 MHz (128 cores, 1024 threads) 278 SAPS/thread.