I had found pile of MySQL and PostgreSQL benchmarks on various platforms which I have not seen before. Very interesting reading.

It does not share too much information about how MySQL or PostgreSQL was configured or about queries. Furthermore MySQL and PostgreSQL has a bit different implementations (ie SubQueries avoided for MySQL) so do not just compare it directly.

It also does not mention if Innodb or MyISAM tables are used – it turns out Both are used in the benchmark. This is CPU bound benchmark with working set fitting in memory.

MySQL and PostrgreSQL Scalability on Xeon Woodcrest, Opteron and Niagra

Pretty interesting to see how PostgreSQL scales just as systems should scale in theory – gradually goes up with number of threads about matches number of Cores/Threads and stays at this level at higher concurrency. MySQL with Innodb shows its ugly face and drops pretty quickly as concurrency growths with peak at about number of CPUs. I guess this is lucky case as Innodb may well start to slow down before concurrency reaches number of CPUs.

Yes, Innodb Team has provided the fix for this scalability problem and it is merged into MySQL 5.0.30 “Enterprise” but according to the tests I’ve done so far it is far from full solution yet.

It is also interesting to see CPU comparison in this test. Woodcrest has best performance in this test (and in many other MySQL tests), Opteron comes second and older Intel Xeons as well as Niagra being outsiders.

Niagra scalability is one more interesting story. As you can see MySQL 4.1 actually scaled pretty well with Niagra, suffering slow regression with increased concurrency rather than quick drop. In MySQL 5.0 it is changed dramatically – it climbs to higher peak but it drops down very quickly as well as concurrency growths. It is seen much better on this picture

Linux vs Solaris comparison is also pretty interesting. With MySQL Linux has higher peak but Solaris suffers less with increased concurrency.

Note: I have not validated these benchmarks and as I already mentioned they do not have full disclosure. They however do match my own experience with MySQL so I tend to trust PostgreSQL data points as well.