Data Center Strategies for the CIO
The TPC-C benchmark has been around since 1992. But servers and databases perform different workloads than they did 15 years ago. To remedy that, TPC is today introducing the successor, TPC-E.
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The new OLTP benchmark has been in development for five years and takes as its model a brokerage house. As such, it benchmarks a workload using more than three times the number of database tables than TPC-C, representing more transactions happening simultaneously.
"The size of the schema and its complexity has increased and improved," said Michael Molloy, a senior manager for enterprise server products at Dell Inc. who serves as TPC's chairman. "With TPC-C, databases were not as complex as they are now."
The new TPC-E benchmark is also now populated with data from the U.S. Census Bureau, so when vendors run queries on it, real data comes out the other side. With TPC-C, queries resulted in nonsensical, gobbledygook characters.
"You're giving me more metrics and basing it on complex transactions," said Joe Clabby, president of analyst firm Clabby Analytics. "It's designed to use a mult-faceted application to go after various types of data, and assemble it and give me a better transaction performance number."
"The way it was written before was essentially for manufacturing," Clabby added. "It was essentially a database read and database input/output. If they're going with something that is more reflective of what today is, that would be a good thing."
TPC-E certification
TPC is now working to certify auditors on the new benchmark, which should be completed in the next month, according to Michael Majdalany, the group's administrator. For a benchmark result to be published, it has to be approved by an auditor certified by the TPC. Vendors and companies can still use the old TPC-C if they want, as that is likely a metric they've gotten comfortable with over the years, but TPC expects published TPC-E results to start coming out this summer and gain in popularity thereafter.
Major server vendors often tout their performance or price-performance results from benchmarks as a selling point for customers. Aside from the TPC, vendors also rely on benchmarks from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), another nonprofit server benchmark firm.
The TPC is also a nonprofit and includes representatives from major IT vendors, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Intel Corp. The representatives -- there are 18 of them -- sit on a full council that decides the direction of the organization and its benchmarks. For anything major to happen, such as passing a new benchmark, 12 members must vote for it.
Let us know what you think about the story; e-mail: Mark Fontecchio, News Writer.
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