Re: 32bit vs 64bit ?

From: Matthias Dolder <matthias_at_zuo.dec.com>
Date: 1996/05/14
Message-ID: <4na4od$60s_at_mrnews.mro.dec.com>#1/1


In article <4msv4d$jjd_at_flonk.uk.sun.com>, timr_at_cerrera.uk.sun.com says...
>
>Don't be misled by marketing hype. 32 bit is sufficient for most of the
 current
>RDBMS requirements.

Will you remember your very own words in a year or two when Solaris finally has become 64-bit ???
Will you still call it marketing hype at this time ?? The work that got into Solaris 2.5.1 to make nearly 4GB of user space available rather proves that some people have seen the benefit of having a lot of memory for an Oracle SGA. Why doing this if 2GB could support a 2TB database according to your rule. There aren't many users that have more than a 2TB database either. and the databse you have to configure for a TPC-C benchmark around 12000tpmC is much smaller than 2TB. So would you have acheived your TPC-C result (see below) also by using only around 300-400MB of SGA ?

..snip..
>If you do need more cached than this
>then the UNIX buffer cache can be as big as 30GB on Sun's new Enterprise
>servers and this does a passable job of cacheing data!
According to local Oracle people, large UNIX buffer caches rather interfere with than help an Oracle database's own db_block_buffer management.

I would also point out
>that the recent TPC-C results showed Sun could very nearly match a 64 bit
>machine with just mid range 32 bit Enterprise 5000. (I can remember the
 exact
>numbers).

Whatever you call 'just mid-range'. You did a very good 11465 tpmC _at_ $188/tpmC [Sybase 11] on a UE 4000. However, this system was stuffed with 12 UltraSPARC CPUs (167Mhz) and 5GB of memory, which compared to most tested config is a rather large system and pretty well compares with AlphaServer 8400 systems Digital usually tests. Our Sybase TPC-C about 6 months ago for example used 10 CPUs and 6GB of memory.  

>Finally, getting your database into memory is all very well but remember -
 you
>have to pay for that memory and it can be quite expensive.
Correct. Is that why SUN starts to build systems that can accomodate 30GB of memory :-) ??

rgds
MatthiasD.



Digital Equipment Corporation, Switzerland Matthias Dolder

Internet: matthias_at_zuo.dec.com

...speaking for myself, not Digital... Received on Tue May 14 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST

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