As I'm doing heavy SFTP file transfer from Solaris 5.10 SPARC to Linux X64, I have observed that processor load during network transfer in SPARC is very low compared to that Linux X64 machine.
The SPARC (V490) machine is 'pushing' Gigs of data to 3 Linux machines, yet the processor load on SPARC is only avg 5% per SFTP process. In Linux, it is avg. 30%.
I have also once 'pull' the data back from Linux to SPARC, yet I'm still seeing load gap.
My Linux boxes are just built-up computers with centrino and i5 processor.
Is UltraSPARC IV processor, though old, can manage network loead better than those brand new i5?
Maybe the saying, "It is the design that create speed, not the clock" is true.
My first guess would be the NIC. SPARC machines, purpose-built servers, would naturally come with rather nice network devices. Network cards that come with a vanilla x86 system, especially onboard interfaces, tend to be cheap, cheap, cheap. Realtek cards are especially infamous for high CPU usage during transfer.
Ah,
That's probably true. Those Linux boxes are using Realtek cards. All of them.
Then, probably I would like to find some high-quality NIC and put it to test
