Re: UltraSPARC versus AMD

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005, Uwe C. Schroeder wrote:

> Well, you overlook one thing there. SUN has always has a really good I/O
> performance - something far from negligible for a database application.
> A lot of the PC systems lack that kind of I/O thruput.
> Just compare a simple P4 with ATAPI drives to the same P4 with 320 SCSI drives
> - the speed difference, particularly using any *nix, is surprisingly
> significant and easily visible with the bare eye.
> There is a reason why a lot of the financial/insurance institutions (having a
> lot of transactions in their DB applications) use either IBM mainframes or
> SUN E10k's :-)
> Personally I think a weaker processor with top of the line I/O will perform
> better for DB apps than the fastest processor with crappy I/O.
>
> i guess the "my $0.02" is in order here :-)
>

Given that "basic" SQL is getting more analytical in capability, esp if
you look at PostGIS/Postgres or Oracle/Informix/DB2 with their respective
spatial extensions, then spatial overlays with several tables with
polygons with large no's of vertices can get cpu bound as well as the more
traditional DB I/O bound limitations.

But, I agree that generally I/O is a more typical db issue.

Brent Wood