IBM starts benchmarketing - today: TPC-C

Okay, it was too obvious to be surprised: IBM starts it´s benchmarketing run for Power6. And they start with the most useless benchmark: TPC-C. As some wise people said: TPC-C is a function over the amount of harddisks, not a benchmark about processor speed. And this baby had many disks in the benchmark configuration. 3312 36 GB harddisks to be exact. This configuration is worth for 1,616,162 transactions. And now the kicker: Look into the benchmark about the old P5 1.9 Ghz p570. 809.144,09 transactions. But with only 1600 harddisk of the same size and the same speed. With an twoandahalf-fold clock frequency increasement and two times the amount of harddisks i would expect more than twice the performance. Interestingly the amount of transactions per second is proportional to the amount of harddisks. So IBM have only the choise to admit two things: Ether the TPC-C is not a benchmak with a significant message of system performance or their new Power6 baby doesn´t scale. At least not with AIX 5.3 So: This benchmark is not an archivement. It´s an embarrasment.