Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

Regarding Availability Dates And Configuration Changes In Published SPEC CPU2000 Results: Sun Results

Originally posted: June 20, 2001.

Sun Microsystems has confirmed to SPEC that a firmware patch is recommended for Sun Blade 1000 Models 1600, 1750, 1900, 2600, 2750, and 2900 and Sun Fire 280R. The patch disables the pre-fetch pipeline, and Sun confirms that there is a performance impact on some floating point programs including some in SPECfp2000 and SPECfp_rate2000. All units manufactured after March 14th, 2001 have the modified firmware, but SPEC CPU2000 (SPECfp2000, SPECfp_rate2000, SPECint2000, SPECint_rate2000) results submitted by Sun and published by SPEC for Sun Blade 1000 Models 1600, 1750, 1900, 2600, 2750, and 2900 and Sun Fire 280R were run on units which did not have the modified firmware. For details, see:

• http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/retrieve.pl?doc=salert%2F26070
• http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/findPatch.pl?patchId=111228&rev=01

Based on the above information, SPEC has determined that the SPEC CPU2000 (SPECfp2000, SPECint2000, SPECfp_rate2000, SPECint_rate2000) results for Sun Blade 1000 Models 1600, 1750, 1900, 2600, 2750, and 2900 and Sun Fire 280R (URL's listed below), although not found in violation of the SPEC CPU2000 run and reporting rules at the time of submission and SPEC review, may not be representative of performance of generally available systems at this time, June 2001. Specifically, the configurations tested, without firmware patch 111228, are no longer available from the vendor, and a replacement configuration available, with firmware patch 111228, may have different performance characteristics.

List of result URL's:

• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00216.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00217.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00218.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00219.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00220.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00221.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00222.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00223.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00224.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00225.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00226.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2000q3/cpu2000-20000911-00227.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2001q1/cpu2000-20001222-00431.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2001q1/cpu2000-20001222-00432.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2001q1/cpu2000-20001222-00441.html
• http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2001q1/cpu2000-20001222-00442.html

Update posted 08/06/2001: As of 7/2001, results on the new configurations have been published on SPEC's website. They are identifiable by their "Jul-2001" publication date (compared to the "Sep-2000" and "Jan-2001" publication dates of the earlier results listed above).