Tomcat better on single or multi core?

[johnrock]

I will be deploying a spring/hibernate web app using Tomcat 6, dbcp and
MySql5.1. I must decide on my initial tomcat dedicated deployment server
configuration and am looking for some advice:

(I am starting with one dedicated Tomcat server..will scale in time)

Based on budget, the affordable options I have to choose from appear to be:
1 single core @3Ghz
or
1 dual core @~2.1Ghz
or
1 Quad core @~2.1Ghz

My question is: Which processor configuration do you think would benefit
tomcat more? Given the limited/basic options I have,would tomcat benefit
more from 2 or more cores or is speed more important?

[Caldarale, Charles R]

Subject: Tomcat better on single or multi core?
Which processor configuration do you think would
benefit tomcat more?

It's not Tomcat you have to think about - it's your webapp, and the expected usage thereof. If the webapp is CPU bound but will be run with limited concurrency, the faster single core *may* be better. If you expect lots of concurrency but still with significant CPU usage, then more cores will help. If you're I/O bound (including DB access), then it's unlikely the CPU configuration will matter much.

- Chuck


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[George Sexton]

You haven't given any pricing information. I guess if it were me and the
prices were all equal, I would go for the Quad-Core. If prices were not
equal, I would go for the dual core.

Post by johnrock
I will be deploying a spring/hibernate web app using Tomcat 6, dbcp and
MySql5.1. I must decide on my initial tomcat dedicated deployment server
(I am starting with one dedicated Tomcat server..will scale in time)
or
or
My question is: Which processor configuration do you think would benefit
tomcat more? Given the limited/basic options I have,would tomcat benefit
more from 2 or more cores or is speed more important?

[Christopher Schultz]

John,

Post by johnrock
or
or

What are the types of cores? Are any of them hyperthreaded? Some of the
older Intel cores (like the P4) run at a high clock speed but aren't as
good as the newer, lower-speed cores. My Core2 Duo @ 2.1GHz beats the
crap out of my old P4 3.0GHz HT chip (same number of logical cores,
older one has higher clock speed rating).

Post by johnrock
My question is: Which processor configuration do you think would benefit
tomcat more? Given the limited/basic options I have,would tomcat benefit
more from 2 or more cores or is speed more important?

Without going into too much detail (and risking flames!):

- - More logical cores are better than less
- - More physical cores are better than less (and better than more
logical cores like hyperthreaded)
- - More physical CPUs aren't as good as multi-core chips with the
same total number of cores (single chip sync'ing with itself
is faster than reaching across the mobo to another chip
to do the same thing)

Java web applications are, by definition, multi-threaded. The more
logical processing units you have, the faster your webapp will run,
since each core can only do one thing at a time!

In my experience, bus speed, memory speed, memory size, and disk speed
are the biggest differentiating factors for servers. Let's face it: your
web application is spending more time allocating, de-allocating, and
copying memory around than it is performing numerical computations. Most
of the time, your CPU is waiting on data to travel from one place to
another, not the other way around.

I would focus on factors other than the CPU, honestly.

- -chris