During my blog post last week titled "[processors-cpus-cores-arent-they-all-the-same|p-10936]", I got a request to talk more about server terminology, going beyond the CPU. So here we go.

The processor does all your computational calculations. The chipset is attached to the processor and manages information and data flow from the processor to the other system components like memory and other I/O (input / output) devices. If the processor is the "brain", then the chipset is the "heart". Memory and I/O devices are like "arms" and "legs" - you need them all working together. The term chipset, memory controller, and memory controller hub (MCH) are often used interchangeably

At Intel, we refer to the platform as the combination of all of these devices that comprise a server. From a hardware perspective, I see the following terms used interchangeably: platform, solution, system, server, workstation, and there are probably others I'm missing. However, I have also seen platform refer to the software stack, as well as the complete hardware and software solution together.

Another term that you may also here is form factor. Form factor refers to the size and shape of the final system you would buy from a manufacturer. The most common server form factors are rack mount, pedestal, towers and blades.

I get questioned often about the difference between these terms and it can be confusing. Now that we are in the era of multi-core, let's explore common terminology. What is the difference between a processor, CPU, a chip, a core and a socket? And how is threading different?

Processor / CPU: This is what Intel makes and OEMs design into their systems.
Processors and CPUs are sometimes referred to as CHIPs
*Sockets:* The physical location on the system board where the processor/CPU goes. Sockets are increasingly used to describe a servers capability. A 4S (4 socket) server supports up to 4 CPUs inside. Sometimes this might also described as to as 4w (wayness) or 4P (processor) server.

Cores: The number physical processing units contained within the processor. There can be one, two, four or more ...
*Threads:* Some Intel processors support multi-threading technology. This is simply the ability to run more than one software thread on a core (Single threaded means one stream of software per core at a time) (Multi-threaded means more than one stream of software is executed in parallel)

So ... Processor, CPU, Socket, and Chips are terms that are often used interchangeably. Cores and Threads are both features inside the processor. Was this helpful to you ? Let me know. Chris

Datacenter Power Management: Power Consumption Trend

Jackson He

As the internet services grow and the more users embracing internet - approaching 1 billion connected users, one of the biggest challenges for data-center operators today is the increasing cost of power and cooling as a portion of the total cost of operations. As shown in Figure 1, over the past decade, the cost of power and cooling has increased 400%, and these costs are expected to continue to rise. In some cases, power costs account for 40-50% of the total data-center operation budget. To make matters worse, there is still a need to deploy more servers to support new business solutions. Data centers are therefore faced with the twin problem of how to deploy new services in the face of rising power and cooling costs. In a recent survey of data centers 59% identify power and cooling as the key factors limiting server deployment.

Figure 1: IDC Report of data center cost structure and trend

At the same time with the increased energy cost and awareness of global warming, there is increased regulatory scrutiny around both idle and max power of servers and clients (desktops and laptops). The "green awareness" datacenter is no longer a "nice to have" feature, but of necessity of business operation and environmental regulatory compliance. Figure 2 highlight the world-wide existing and emerging regulations on power and energy consumption. Future datacenters have to be able to clearly measure and proof regulation conformance in order to operate properly.

Figure 2: Existing and emerging energy and power regulations

To sum it up, the power management trends for future datacenters are multifaceted and will not be covered by a single company or a single business segment. They could be summarized in the following areas:

• At environment level: conform to increased government regulations on energy and power and increased power constraint (limited available power) - need innovative ways to conform "green datacenter" regulations, while deliver great values to business.

• At the datacenter level: more computing power is needed with increased demand; emergence of mega datacenter and modular datacenter (datacenter in a container); the overall power and cooling distributions need to match the increased need - new datacenter designs and power/cooling management needed.

• At rack level: higher power density and higher server density per rack is needed to pack more computing power for a given space and cooling; workload balance between racks to increase power efficiency and overall datacenter reliability - need effective rack-level power and cooling monitoring and dynamic management capabilities

• At server level: need lower idle and max processing power, so that platform power consumption trend is more linear with platform performance; dynamically adjust power consumption based on policy and workload - need more server-level instrumentations for power/cooling monitoring and more control knobs to dynamically optimize power and performance.

I hope you agree with me of the overall datacenter power management trends at datacenters in the coming year. These trends pose challenges for each of the areas listed above. These challenges also mean opportunities for innovative solutions to thrive. I'd like to listen to your feedback about these trends. I will talk more about challenges and potential solutions in the upcoming blogs. You are welcome to share your thought of where you believe the datacenter power management is going. Thanks a lot.

Whenever I see the word fabric, I immediately think of cloth, which immediately takes my mind to "helping" pick out curtains, which puts me in immanent boredom mode. Pardon the offense to those of you that actually know what color curtains you own, but there are some very cool things happening in data center communication.

Today the boxes in the data center (servers, storage, switches, ...) communicate over some combination of medium and protocols. While some protocols have become less common, (DECnet, Token Ring) there is still a bunch of InfiniBand, Fiber Channel, and Ethernet. Guess what, Ethernet is going to win. Ok, that was an unsupported prognostication,,, but Ethernet has won in every other arena it has entered.

Ethernet is what I really want to talk about today. There are a series of changes happening that allow Ethernet to be cast in the role of data center fabric. The first is simple throughput - 10GB. 10GB has the capacity to support the needs of detached storage. The thing that really makes this possible is a QOS feature called "priority pause". This extension to the Ethernet standard enables Ethernet to support QOS for differentiated services and to minimize or eliminate packet drops.

This new "Ethernet" enables rich SOE ( Storage over Ethernet) beyond iSCSI to FCOE( fiber channel over Ethernet). Intel has open[-sourced|http://open-fcoe.org/] FCOE software, and the network community is actively discussing the future of Fiber Channel.

Consolidating on 10gb reduces required port counts, and a single protocol reduces server hardware and switch infrastructure. All of this saves energy and simplifies data center wire management. These are good things. The extensions to the Ethernet specs were the result of collaboration between Intel and other industry leaders. This new spec should make it simpler to choose which curtains will go best in the data center

Intel is the leader in the add on server NIC business has great products available in the 10gb NIC space. The Intel NICS, when used on and Intel based platform, also support VMDQ - part of Intel's "Virtualization Technology for Connectivity". At VMworld Intel demonstrated that VMDQ technology in Intel Network Adapters boosted max throughput on a 10gb virtualized connection from 4gb to ~9gb - nearly max theoretical capacity.

You can buy the bits today! There are about 30 different vendors with products in the 10gb space. Clearly this is a ripe area for innovation and entry. The question remains glass or copper - optical or electrical? There are pros and cons for each, and both are supported by this next generation Ethernet. I would love to hear which you are choosing and why.

Today's workstation with (2) Intel® Xeon® 5400 Series processors transforms a workstation from a simple design terminal into a powerful engineering tool that helps users potentially compress the time between an idea and a product. At Intel we call that "working differently". In the manufacturing vertical market it may also be called:

• digital prototyping,

• analysis driven design or

• simulation based product design.

No matter what you call it, these new ways of working help manufacturers virtually explore complete products before they are built-so they can create, validate, optimize, and manage designs from the conceptual design phase through the manufacturing process.

Digital prototyping processes may also require that you also rethink your workstation deployment strategy; moving from single processor workstations, to two (2) Intel Xeon 5400 processor based workstations with 8 computational cores and up to 100 peak gigaflops of floating point performance. This compute capacity coupled with the robust visualization environment enabled by two (2) PCI Gen 2 graphics adapters changes would be workstations into workstation supercomputers and enables engineers and designers to concurrently perform traditional CAD design as well moderate size analysis (e.g. over 5M degrees of freedom finite element modeling jobs or up to 10M cell fluid dynamic simulations).

This combination (CAD and Analysis) can help organization optimize CAD parts or assemblies under a wide range of physical scenarios including mechanical and thermal effects. Net result is workstation supercomputers based on Intel® Xeon® 5400 Series processor can help to bring higher quality or more innovative ideas to markets faster than ever before.