SYSTEMS

IBM today announced that IBM System p5 servers, running the Linux OS, have achieved industry-leading benchmark results that beat competitors' servers in important measurements of business and scientific performance. The IBM System p5 servers using the Linux OS achieved top speed according to recent SPECcpu performance benchmarks. SPECcpu, a software benchmark product produced by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC), contains two benchmark suites: SPECint for measuring and comparing compute-intensive integer performance and SPECfp for measuring and comparing compute-intensive floating point performance. "IBM's System p™ servers' superiority to HP machines in these key performance benchmarks illustrates the superior value that the IBM POWER5+-based servers running the Linux OS offer customers," said Jeff Howard, director, System p Offering Management. "IBM's System p5 servers' leadership results in both integer and floating point performance reinforce the capabilities of the IBM System p platform in commercial as well as technical environments." IBM's best-in-class SPECcpu performance achievements include: * 11 percent greater performance than HP's largest SPECfp 1-core Linux server result. * 26 percent greater SPECfp 1-core performance than HP's largest Itanium 2 processor-based Linux server result. * 20 percent greater 2-core SPECfp_rate performance than HP's Xeon processor-based ProLiant ML350system running the Linux OS. * 19 percent greater 8-core SPECint_rate performance than largest 8-core HP Linux server result. * 40 percent greater SPECfp_rate 2-core performance than HP's Integrity rx2620 system with Itanium 2 processing power. * Over two times greater performance on SPECfp_rate using an IBM 8-core System p5 550 server versus HP's DL585 Opteron processor-based system. According to the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), an organization devoted to benchmarking transaction processing systems, the IBM System p5 520 running the Linux OS continues to maintain its leadership position as the most powerful two-core server based on the TPC-C benchmark. The IBM System p5 570 is the top performing Linux eight-core server running SAP beating all comparable systems by HP, Sun Microsystems, and all other vendors on the SAP SD Standard Application benchmark. IBM System p servers, using IBM POWER5+ and POWER5 processors, help customers simplify their IT infrastructure at a low cost and increase flexibility while simultaneously allowing them to improve overall performance and efficiency of operations. For more information about IBM, visit its Web site.