ThinkSystem SR950 Sets World Record with New Eight-Socket SPECpower Result

Lenovo has published leadership 8-socket (4U rack) performance results for the SPECpower_ssj 2008 benchmark. The SPECpower_ssj 2008 benchmark is the first industry-standard benchmark that evaluates the power and performance characteristics of single server and multi-node servers.

Figure 1. Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 server

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 delivered the following SPECpower_ssj 2008 8-socket (4U rack) world record performance result, as of April 2, 2019:

• SPECpower_ssj2008 = 12,886 overall ssj_ops/watt

The SR950 was configured as follows:

• 8x Intel Xeon Platinum 8276L Processors (28 cores, 2.20 GHz, 38.5 MB L3 Cache)
• 768 GB of DDR4 memory.
• 1x 128GB M.2 SSD
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 using the Oracle Java HotSpot 64-Bit Server VM (JVM).

This benchmark result, published April 2, 2019 can be found at:
https://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/res2019q2/power_ssj2008-20190312-00928.html

To view all SPECpower_ssj 2008 results, see the following page:
https://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/power_ssj2008.html

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 is designed for your most demanding, mission-critical workloads, such as in-memory databases, large transactional databases, batch and real-time analytics, ERP, CRM, and virtualized server workloads. The powerful 4U ThinkSystem SR950 can grow from two to eight second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Family processors, and with 96 DIMM sockets, supports up to 24 TB of high-speed memory. The modular design of SR950 speeds upgrades and servicing with easy front or rear access to all major subsystems to maximize server availability. The ThinkSystem SR950 also supports Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory delivering a new, flexible tier of memory designed specifically for data center workloads that offer an unprecedented combination of high-capacity, affordability and persistence.

The SR950 packs numerous fault-tolerant and high-availability features into a high-density, 4U rack-optimized design that reduces the space needed to support massive network computing operations and simplify servicing. Lenovo XClarity Controller is an all-new hardware embedded management engine common in every ThinkSystem server. XClarity Controller features an uncluttered graphical user interface, industry standard Redfish-compliant REST APIs, and enables booting in half the time of prior generation servers, with up to 6x faster firmware updates.

Lenovo XClarity Administrator is a virtualized application that centrally manages ThinkSystem servers, storage, and networking. Via reusable patterns and policies, it ramps up and scales infrastructure provisioning and maintenance. It serves as a central integration point to extend your data center management processes to physical IT. Running XClarity Integrators in external IT applications, or integrating through REST APIs, helps you further speed services provisioning, streamline IT management, and contain costs.

ThinkShield is a comprehensive approach to security designed to secure the data center, from the foundation of your infrastructure to the network's edge and guard against a security breach. ThinkShield protects your business with each offering, from development through disposal.

The SPEC Power benchmark suite measures the power and performance characteristics of server-class computer equipment. It is used to compare power and performance among different servers and serves as a toolset for use in improving server efficiency. This benchmark is targeted for use by hardware vendors, IT industry, computer manufacturers, and governments.

To learn more about power-efficient solutions for compute-intensive applications, please contact your Lenovo Sales Representative.

To find out more about SPEC, visit https://www.spec.org

To learn more about the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 server, visit the SR950 product web page.