I just saw the news that Sun may be canceling the long-awaited next-gen SPARC CPU line. (Details - Sun Is Said to Cancel Big Chip Project - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com) Instead, they'll rely on Fujitsu for SPARC CPUs -- however it seems that Fujitsu has already scaled back R&D because the SPARC line isn't profitable.

Personally, I believe this is a good choice. With all of the performance testing I've done with OTM and Oracle DBs, there are other architectures and platforms that perform...

Hello!

Okay - so we all know the drill -- I'm a sucker for benchmarking and base a lot of the decisions here at MavenWire on the results (hardware/software/OS directions, performance recommendations, etc). Since we've based our Hosting infrastructure on Linux, we needed a way to quickly and reliably test the performance of various servers and also validate new servers before putting them into service. Luckily, another company (Phoronix Media) had the exact same need and created test...

Hello!

I wanted to give a quick tutorial on how to benchmark real-world network performance using Soap Stone. I like this benchmark more than standard network throughput tests (ttcp, NetIO, etc) because it uses the Java JVM (just as OTM does) and it also utilizes application protocols that are similar to OTMs -- so rather than a meaningless throughput number, the results reflect the throughput you'll see with OTM and other multi-tier Java applications. Specifically, I test 3 protocols:...

Hello!

I wanted to give a quick tutorial on how to benchmark JVM performance with the DaCapo Benchmarks. This is a great benchmark for determining the computational (algorithm crunching) power of different Java JVMs on various platforms. Also, since this is a highly computational, it does a good job of providing relative OTM Bulk Planning performance. Best of all, it fits into the MavenWire Benchmark Toolkit, because it works well. As an added bonus for the community - it's free!...

Hello!

I wanted to give a quick tutorial on how to benchmark DB performance with Hammerora. This is a great benchmark for determining the relative performance of Oracle databases -- allowing you to compare various platforms and also DB configuration changes. Since this is a highly multi-threaded test, it simulates the activity coming from the OTM DB connection pool very well. Best of all, it fits into the MavenWire Benchmark Toolkit, because it works well. As an added bonus for the...