Mac Pro Nehalem Tests: Software Development

This page tests software developer tests — building applications.

Want a top-performing Mac Pro pre-configured and pre-tested? See this page.

XCode build PERMALINK

CPU Utilization
16 cores @ 100%

Build diglloyd DiskTester using Apple XCode. This test scales to large number of CPU cores extremely well and is not sensitive to disk speed at all.

Here the MP08 takes 75% longer than the MP09, not surprising given that all 16 cores of the MP09 are nearly pegged at 100% usage (test duration is green band as seen at right).

This is a fantastic performance by XCode, and it shows what a well-written program can do with 16 cores.

Single vs dual CPU: XCode scales beautifully; any developer using XCode is ill-advised to use a single-CPU Mac Pro: the dual-CPU MP09 is twice as fast.

Apple XCode — build DiskTester

Java/Maven build — GlassFish V3 PERMALINK

CPU Utilization
Very poor.

This test does not scale well at all to multiple cores because it is a single-threaded affair, and also a CPU-bound test, so top speed of a single core is paramount.

Gains here are decent, but not exciting— only 7% for our estimated 3.2GHz MP08.

Single vs dual CPU: The single-threaded maven build makes no use of extra cores, so build times are the same for the single or dual CPU MP09.

Maven build Glassfish V3

Conclusions PERMALINK

Coming soon...

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