[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
Both VeriTest (formerly ZDlabs) on Microsoft’s behalf and IBM
have recently issued reports on running Ziff Davis Media’s NetBench
performance benchmark on mainframe Linux. The results are not
directly comparable because IBM used a dedicated 16-CPU z900, while
VeriTest was restricted to a two-CPU partition on a z900.“Overall, however, it appears that Microsoft reports better
mainframe performance than IBM does. The IBM z900 two-processor
LPAR achieved 14 percent less performance at nearly 20 times the
cost when compared with an ordinary server with two 900-MHz Intel
Xeon processors running Windows Server 2003.“These results might seem surprising enough to those unfamiliar
with mainframe Linux, but the truly astonishing thing here is
Microsoft’s apparent reticence in presenting results that
dramatically favor the Windows platform. Look at the report
carefully, and you’ll see Microsoft suffering from fear,
uncertainty and doubt as it confronts the reality of its own
results…”