Re: Quad Xeon vs. Dual Itanium

At 11:44 AM 2/9/2004 -0500, Doug McNaught wrote:

>John Gibson <gib(at)edgate(dot)com> writes:
>
> > Assuming similar memory and disk sub-systems, I am considering a Quad
> > Xeon system vs. a Dual Itanium for PostgreSQL. I believe that the
> > PostgreSQL code is written for 32 bit and not optimized for the 64 bit
> > Itanium cpu. That makes me think that the Xeon system would be a
> > better choice.
>
>Postgres runs on many 64-bit systems, including UltraSPARC, MIPS, and
>Alpha, plus the Intel and AMD offerings. What makes you think it's
>'not optimized'?

Maybe compilers aren't as good at doing Itanium yet?

John Gibson <gib(at)edgate(dot)com> writes: "I need to upgrade my dual Xeon
PostgreSQL engine."
It just might be helpful if you could tell us "where it hurts".

Unless you need cutting edge floating point performance I doubt you'd want
an Itanium (and even if you do, you might wish to consider powerpc as well).

Without any more info, I'd ask why not dual/quad Opteron? Even if you don't
recompile or wait for better compilers or use 64 bit such a system would
probably run faster than your dual Xeons.
---

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/30/05FElinux_2.html

"Tests were run on three separate hardware platforms: Intel Xeon (x86),
Intel Itanium (IA-64), and AMD Opteron (x86_64). The x86 tests were
conducted on an IBM eServer x335 1U rack-mount server with dual 3.06GHz P4
Xeon processors and 2GB of RAM. The Itanium tests were run on an IBM
eServer x450 3U rack-mount server with dual 1.5GHz Itanium2 processors and
2GB of RAM. And the Opteron tests were run on a Newisys 4300 3U rack-mount
server with dual 2.2GHz Opteron 848 processors and 2GB of RAM. "

Summary: Dual Itanium slower than Xeon in many tests, Opteron fastest in
most tests.