The Server Room Blog

Nehalem-EX for High Performance Computing

matthew.j.kmiecik@intel.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:58:17 GMT

Nehalem-EX: Big Memory for Big Science

I was at SuperComputing’09 last week in Portland, Oregon. I talked with some brilliant people, and saw some fantastic stuff.

It was good timing on my part because last week Intel also announced that it would offer a 6-core, frequency-optimized version of its Nehalem-EX product due out next year. This part is intended for use in tackling some of the types of high performance computing (HPC) workloads prominently displayed at SC’09.

Most people know that the majority of HPC workloads today are based on clusters of relatively small-memory, 2-socket systems. That is because most HPC workloads may be broken into smaller, discrete units of work that can be efficiently processed using such clusters. For these workloads the primary hardware capability selection criterion is typically a balance of both memory bandwidth and compute FLOPs (floating point operations per second).

But there are other types of HPC workloads. Specifically, those that deal with very large datasets (some as large as a terabyte) or those that have to deal with non-sequential memory access. This means the workloads simply aren’t easily divisible--or it is inefficient to do so-- into the relatively small memory footprints used in traditional clustered 2-socket HPC solutions. Examples of these types of bigger memory applications can be found in a variety of fields such as weather prediction, manufacturing structure analysis, and financial services.

The high-speed processing requirements and size of these workloads put a greater premium on system memory capacity/bandwidth than on compute FLOPs.

If the larger dataset won’t fit into available memory, and dividing up the dataset to spread across multiple nodes cannot easily be done, then data has to be moved in and out memory to hard disk. But using hard disk drives (which are many times slower than RAM memory) can drastically impair performance.

There are now two better alternatives to the use of hard drivers. One is SSDs and the other is having a larger memory footprint. Solid State Drives have fairly high data density vs RAM, but much faster access than hard-disk drives--albeit still markedly slower than RAM. Another solution is to simply have more capacity of the faster RAM. This last one is what the Nehalem-EX HPC part is aimed at.

Nehalem-EX is the Expandable Class of Nehalem. The Expandable Class brings all the goodness of the Nehalem architecture (Xeon 5500 product line) to the HPC market, but in the form of a “super node” that has greater: a) core/thread count, b) socket scaling (up to 256), c) I/O and memory capacity (up to 1 terabyte in a 4 socket system) and bandwidth at capacity, d) reliability features, e) and other features.

The 6-core frequency-optimized Nehalem-EX part has also been tuned to offer the highest core frequency possible for this chip. In creating this part, Intel is meeting the needs of the HPC community that want higher scalar performance along with the benefit of large memory capacity and bandwidth per core.

Of course the 8-core version of NHM-EX is still an option for those HPC workloads that scale well with more cores while still looking for the high memory capacity of the expandable class.

By having both 8-core and frequency optimized 6-core versions of the NHM-EX class of processors means HPC researchers have greater choice in selecting the processor best suited for their specific workloads.

After talking with some of the researchers at SC’09 last week I’m really excited to see how the Nehalem-EX “super node” will deliver the necessary compute and memory capabilities to help those researchers solve some of their biggest challenges.

'You are not Alone' - When it comes to moving from RISC

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:18:41 GMT

Change is hard, but it can be done and the benefits of change usually outweigh the concerns which were on our minds before we made the change.

When making the change from running your solution on a RISC architecture to running that solution on a Xeon architecture, the biggest concern usually relates to whether that solution will run at the same level as on the previous architecture. I'm not talking about performance specifically, but usually the question is around whether operating systems like Linux, Windows, and Solaris on Xeon will meet your business needs for yourmission critical solutions.

Like the underlying improvements in the microprocessor, I believe that there have also been major fundamental improvements in the operating systems that run on both today's and the soon to come next generation microprocessors (sorry, my obligatory Nehalem-EX advertisement... coming soon in 2010). A decision made many years ago to run your solution on Unix/RISC was made based on comparing all the different variables at that time to pick what was right for your business. At that time you likely decided that your solution would not run on these operating systems, these operating systems were not suitable for your mission critical workloads etc. Probably right decision at that point, but like everything else decisions get revisited based upon the here and now and what may have been the right solution in the past (and right decision) may not be the right solution for your needs now.

I wanted to share some thoughts specifically on Redhat Linux today. Lets take a little look at Redhat Enterprise Linux. Current versions of Redhat can deliver what is required for your critical solutions. RHEL is ready and here are some of the reasons cited by Redhat in recent webinars on this topic and my interpretation of their comments

Hosts real-time global mission-critical infrastructures and operations 24 X 7 - its tried and tested by other Enterprises
Enables 5x9s availability in highly secure environments - pretty important to most critical solutions
Contributes measurable reductions to TCO and enables, agile, standardized, and virtualized infrastructures - TCO benefits through standardization
Has major ISVs on-board with the majority of 3rd party Unix applications have Linux and/or Windows versions available - the ISVs that traditionally delivered applications to you based on Unix, also have versions supported on Linux/Windows
Many customer unique applications are developed with programming languages such as C, C++, JAVA, or J2EE and can be migrated to Linux and / or Windows - your applications can be moved
Hosts most major database systems standard for your infrastructure - all the major databases run and run well on Linux

One of the other things we encounter a lot is around whether the technical considerations to move from one operating system environment are too high to overcome and outweigh the benefits of moving. There are always technical considerations and things that you need to know to move from one environment to another. However you are not alone in trying to understand these technical considerations. Redhat have done a phenomenal job of documenting the challenges of moving from say Solaris to Linux and have developed a great Strategic Migration Planning Guide. This is available on request. In recent webinars Redhat outline some of the things that you need to consider for the following technical categories

- Development Environment; Kernel tuning; Security; Filesystems; Debugging, tracing, Profiling; Command Differences; Deployment methods; Software Management; Virtualization; Application considerations

In addition to the current versions of Redhat running on Intel architecture, we are also working very closely on future versions that will take advantage of the 20+ new RAS features that are planned for Nehalem-EX - more on that in a future blog

You are not alone, resources, tools and expertize exist to help you make that move and reap the business benefits while still delivering to the requirements of your business. Check out Redhat online tools for more information that dives deeper into all the areas for consideration http://www.redhat.com/migrate/solaris_to_linux/

We think Redhat Linux and Xeon are ready to run your mission critical workloads and solutions...What do you think?

"Live From Super Computing 2009"

william.h.lea@intel.com — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:12:27 GMT

This week I'm in Portland, Oregon, where I call home. Its interesting for me since this is my first Super Computing conference, and soo far, I'm really impressed, not only by the intense knowledge and the plethera of scientific discovery all around, but also by the fact this conference is so well attended. There -s a huge trade show floor, filled to capacity where you can see everything from genome research to oil and gas exploration, to bio-computing. . It's very cool to see NASA, Oak Ridge Labratory, and many top universities all showing off the lastest in High Performance Computing, some very cool stuff indeed. From the point of view of higher learning and how super computers are changing the world, this is the place to be. Here are a few shots of the Intel booth in case you get a chance to come by and see us.

I'll be capturing some cool videos from the conference and you should keep a look out for these on Channel Intel at YouTube. Thanks for stopping by The Server Room.

Isilon and Intel, delivering high performance scalable storage

sarah.m.jacobson@intel.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:01:08 GMT

I attended VMWorld in San Francisco and captured some video on Isilon, a great Intel-based scale-out solution. The first link is John Gallagher, Director of Product Marketing at Isilon, giving an overview of their products and how Intel adds to their solution. He also talks about some of their more successful markets.

The second link is a chalktalk provided by Nick Kirsch, Senior Product Manager at Isilon, in which he discusses how Isilon storage delivers scale out storage for large scale server virtualization. I am also looking for any great Isilon success stories, so let me know!

Why Are You Still Running Your CAD Application As 32 Bit Application?

wesley.e.shimanek@intel.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:33:48 GMT

Ok it may be that your IT department or enterprise applications are limiting your opportunity to adopt 64 bit version of your favorite CAD application, but your inability to adopt a 64 bit CAD application can be very limiting to your productivity.

Here as an example from a recent discussion with some end users who are involved in a workstation pilot with Intel. When they moved to a 64 bit version of their favorite CAD application the time to open a 2.5GB file dropped from 20 minutes to less than 1.

Question - How many files does your engineering team open a day? What is the cost of the 20 minutes?

Customers operating in a 32 bit world are forced to work with smaller models. You knew that. And of course smaller file sizes will open faster.

But….

Rather than working with the chassis, engine and transmission in a single view, you will need to work each one independently. The results is you may miss a design interference, a misalignment or another obvious design issue, because you only had a partial view of the entire design. More rework and more delays.

Yes but... many of the enterprise applications you use are 32 bit and you need to have a 32 bit workstation environment in order to access these tools. That may have been true once, but with technology like Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O and Parallels™ Workstation Extreme software you now have the opportunity for an uncompromised workstation experience. You get all the benefits of a 64 bit CAD application and you can still work within a 32 bit environment when you need to. You can even pass the data between workstation environments.

Do not be too slow to adopt a 64 bit version of your favorite CAD application, just opening files faster and working with a complete design can make eth cost of a new workstation irrelevant.

To learn more about Intel® Xeon® based workstations visit www.intel.com\go\workstation

Analysis Driven Design on a Digital Workbenches Powered by the Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series

wesley.e.shimanek@intel.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:43:18 GMT

Are you ready to innovate faster or explore more design options in less time than ever before?

The digital workbench powered by two Intel Xeon 5500 processors gives you the opportunity to create, test and modify your idea right at your workstation. Have no doubt, workstations powered by two processors, with eight total cores, sixteen computational threads, and memory capacities up to 192GB are proving extremely capable at analysis-driven design.

Today’s digital workbench is nothing at all like last year’s workstation, which may have struggled to design and simulate. This new breed of a workstation presents you with the capability to rapidly play “what if?”

What is driving the interest in the digital workbench?

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are looking for opportunities to reduce design cycle times and associated costs without negatively impacting product performance. One potential method of achieving this is by enabling designers to consider the validity of a greater number of design concepts earlier in the design cycle. This may not only shorten design cycles, but it may also enable you to ultimately deliver a more favorable product configuration.

The product development rules are changing.

Manufacturers are recognizing that by reordering product design activities, they may be able to achieve a more efficient product development process. By empowering engineers with easy-to-use and powerful 3D conceptual design tools, together with early access to CAE applications, engineers may be able develop the most advantageous designs before committing them to labor-intensive detailed design processes.

Isn’t this old news?

Many manufacturers agree the greatest opportunity to impact product development cost is by bringing simulation forward. That is old news. Manufacturers know that when product analysis or simulation results trail the detailed design process then product changes become extremely expensive and negatively impact new product release schedules. Worse yet, they also realize that changes made downstream in a design cycle are “last minute” and almost always imply compromises on original design goals. This, of course, cuts into the product performance and profits of the new or updated product.

Using simulation and getting results before the detailed design process begins helps ensure that the CAD models meet performance requirements, mitigating last-minute and expensive design changes.

OK, the product development rules may be changing, but I still need an expert.

No doubt, the expert is still needed. However, advancements at companies like ALTAIR, ANSYS, SIMULIA, MSC, SpaceClaim and others are all making it easier to bring simulation and analysis further upstream in the design process.

As one example, let’s look at the ANSYS Workbench platform. This solution provides an easy-to-use framework that guides the user through even complex multi-physics analyses with drag-and-drop simplicity. It supports bi-directional CAD connectivity and enables the idea of simulation-driven product development.

ANSYS is an example of what ISVs are doing to create tools that learn from the experts and export them to others who need access to their knowledge. Yes, the expert is still very much needed, but leveraging the expert’s knowledge and driving it upstream in the design process is needed even more.

The new model

Using the combined hardware and software technologies delivered through a digital workbench, engineers can now create a single digital model that gives them the ability to design, visualize and simulate their products faster than ever.

This hardware and software suite enables users to create a digital prototype and can help engineers to reduce their reliance on costly physical prototypes and get more innovative designs to market faster.

The digital workbench helps users bring together design data from all phases of the product development process into a single digital model that can be rapidly changed, tested and validated.

What can you do to test the promise of the digital workbench?

Today’s workstation can provide you with a magnificent digital canvas to create tomorrow today. You need to decide if you want to explore reordering your product design activities and potentially achieve a more efficient product development process.

Today’s workstation gives engineers a new tool that can be likened to a digital workbench. This tool, powered by two Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, hosts a suite of software applications that engineers can employ to create and test their ideas. The pliers, hammer and nails found on a workbench in a garage or basement have now been replaced with digital tools that promise to accelerate innovations via a process known as digital prototyping. Its enablers include application tools like detailed CAD, CAE and PIM. Together they represent the new digital workbench—a powerful innovation tool you can use to bring your ideas forward faster than ever before.

Are you ready to use a digital workbench?

Visit www.intel.com/go/workstation to see which workstation is right for you.

Your server workloads may be cheating you on power... get it back!

todd.christ@intel.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:12:17 GMT

Prior to the Intel Xeon X5500 Server Platforms*, measuring server power was done via expensive equipment and could only be performed in a discrete fashion. Unless you had tons of monitoring equipment to mash-up your power data - it was a tedious process. Now, using Intel DCM and Node Manager - you can pull multiple servers worth of power info to make some important power decisions in your datacenter.

First of all, you need to baseline your workload. If you're confident that you can replicate workload patterns then you've got a starting point. Otherwise, it's usually a good idea to start monitoring and looking for some cyclical patterns and/or common data points (time, power, thermals, etc) to keep track of.

In this scenario (like in my last blog) we're using a SQL workload which can be modified to run the CPU at high levels for a relatively set amount of time. The base workload runs for 7 min 30 seconds, as shown in the Intel DCM screencap below.

In this test case: Idle power for the 4 servers is 782W, and under load - the power increases to 1174W - which is a delta of 392W. This power increase occurs when work is given to the server and the P/T states react to the workload and increase power/voltage to the system to increase performance. Exactly what we've been used to seeing even since EIST was introduced several years ago.

Now, what I'll show you is something that may be very interesting in scale... I will power cap the servers by 20W each, and set the Intel DCM Power Policy to only allow 1095W for the 4 servers in the rack.

What is awesome here is that we can still finish the workload in the same 7 minutes 30 seconds. So essentially, we have saved 80W of power for each set of 4 servers and still get the same amount of work completed! In a large datacenter this can be HUGE in energy savings.

Let's do some quick math: 20W power savings per serer x 10,000 servers = 20kW power savings and you still get the work done. I hope I just helped some of you server admins get some new ideas on your next "I need a raise" talk with your manager

*your mileage may vary, so test your own workloads and report out!

Why upgrade your hardware when migrating to SAP ERP 6.0?

ennis.p.skillern@intel.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:10:06 GMT

Why upgrade your hardware when migrating to SAP ERP 6.0? Because it makes simple, practical, business sense that is all. SAP has identified several key reasons why customers are concerned about migration and several among them are as follows:

· Cost, Cost, Cost

o HW infrastructure cost is highlighted as one of the key barriers of migration

· Business Justification

o Is there a compelling business reason to upgrade the hardware?

· Additional risk of business disruption

o Migration of ERP environment is complex enough…how much more risk is there when upgrading your hardware?

From a cost perspective, the perception that hardware is a barrier to migration can be easily overcome. Based on research, the hardware cost as a percentage of the overall migration cost is only about 7%. That means 93% of the cost is in licensing, consulting, etc, etc. HW costs are only the “tip of the iceberg” and the real $ investment lies elsewhere in the equation.

Is there a compelling business reason to upgrade your hardware? Well…frankly, it does not make sense not to do it. One, we showed above that the hardware investment is minimal compared to SW licensing, consulting, service, etc. Two, the hardware requirements of ERP 6.0 are significantly higher than previous versions. ERP 6.0 requires up to 2.5x more CPU performance, 2.5x more memory and 1.5x more I/O! You will need the increased performance and scalability that Intel provides in our microprocessors. While the ERP performance requirements have increased 2.5x, Intel performance with SAP has increased 10X! Oh, btw…energy efficiency does matter and in your new ERP environment you will be able to consolidate servers and save on power and cooling costs. TCO will be significantly reduced and from hardware investment standpoint, you are likely going to recover the cost of the servers in a very reasonable timeframe.

From my discussions with the IT community, their major concern and number one focus area is to prevent business disruption and downtime. This costs companies real and significant money. The fact is that an ERP migration is a complex enough project managing the strategic, functional and technical portions. Adding a server infrastructure change increases fundamental risk. But, the key here is that it is done often and done successfully. Intel IT has published several whitepapers on the subject and communicated “Best Known Methods” to minimize that risk. A quick summary is inserted here:

Challenge:

• Convert Intel’s Worldwide Warehouse Management Software

• Upgrade from SAP* ERP version 4.7 to 6.0, change the DBMS, and perform a Unicode* conversion as well as a hardware upgrade

• Minimize downtime

Benefit to Intel IT:

• SAP ERP 6.0 improves Intel supportability

• Increases ease of integration to SAP NetWeaver* 7.1 Suite

• Provides access to Enhancement Packs and Enterprise Services

• Intel^® Itanium^®-based servers provide access to 128 GB of memory for database and SAP operations and significantly increased performance from true 64-bit processing

Key Results:

• Reduced downtime of upgrade by 50% by using Intel Architecture

In summary, upgrading your server infrastructure when migrating your ERP environment is a very, very complex task, but form a business perspective, it should be fairly easy to see the true benefits from combining the ERP migration and hardware upgrade at the same time.

Better together: engineering collaboration at the heart of breakthrough capability

andrew.i.fields@intel.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:00:37 GMT

As I’m new to The Server Room, I offer this brief introduction: I am a marketing manager in Intel’s Software and Services Group – looking after Intel’s collaborative marketing efforts with virtualization solution providers.

A couple weeks ago, Ken Lloyd blogged about the incredible changes in compute capability and performance brought by the Nehalem microarchitecture – and gave credit to the advances in software, too. I’d like to take the conversation a step further: did you know that the launch of VMware™ vSphere 4.0 in April 2009 represented a milestone of collaborative development? The combination of VMware vSphere and Intel Xeon processor 5500 based systems delivers astonishing performance in part because it is the result of a full cycle of collaboration.

Intel has a well established rhythm of technology innovation – and a lot of really smart architects who know a thing or two about cpu design – but we get innovative ideas from the outside, too. Over the years of the VMware alliance, Intel has received (and acted on) many requests for small changes in cpu circuitry…changes that would make virtualizing the cpu easier, more efficient, or add capability. A whole raft of hardware optimizations for virtualization were included in the Nehalem architecture. As Intel started to deliver early silicon for Xeon 5500 based platforms, Intel software engineers worked closely with VMware engineers – optimizing vSphere code to take advantage of the new hardware features to improve performance, increase efficiency, and add new functionality. The results? Check out this video from the launch of VMware™ vSphere 4.0 to see for yourself what “better together” really means. And the cycle continues – what can you imagine in the next round of collaborative innovation??

And the winner of the Intel Xeon Workstation Sweepstakes is...

greg.wagnon@intel.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:38:33 GMT

Congratulations to Ron as the winner of the Intel Xeon Workstation Sweepstakes. He has been a member of The Server Room for over a year and was able to complete the quiz on the first attempt.

Good job!

"I was excited to hear that I won the Intel Xeon workstation sweepstakes. With its incredible performance, the system offers me the flexibility to use it in so many ways that I'm not sure how to best utilize it at the moment. It's a welcome problem to have and I look forward exploring the possibilities. Thanks to Intel and the Server Room team for providing a great resource to everyone!"

Thank you all for entering and look for more sweepstakes offerings in the near future.

- Your 'The Server Room' Admin's

Somebody Blew The Whistle on The ‘Nehalem’ Effect

bryce.olson@intel.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:24:19 GMT

There’s a video going around from one of Intel’s top external customers. Before you see this (video linked below) I wanted to position this correctly. I caught up with Mr. X at an undisclosed coffee shop and got his approval to share publicly the messages that we would have rather had him go out with. Those messages are as follows:

Mr. X’s 4 year old servers were a burden on his organization, he spent all of his budget on just maintenance, nothing left for innovation.

He looked at his old infrastructure and determined that replacing them with more powerful-energy efficient servers from Intel was a strategic investment.

The New intel Xeon 5500 based servers provided the opportunity for him to innovate again. He claimed that these new Intel Xeon Processor 5500 (Nehalem-EP) are the best enabler of IT business value that he's seen in years.

They boosted energy efficiency, saved him big $ and extended his facility lifespan – now he doesn’t have to go build a new data center.

He replaced his old servers in a 9:1 ratio (getting rid of 9 old and replacing with 1 new) that enabled him to cut operational expenditures by 90% …And that savings alone is paying for the investment in these new servers in just 8 months.

By strategically investing in IT when his competitors hunkered down and cut spending – he is now positioned to grow faster and gain share as the economic upturn arrives.

Ok, now that I’ve had a chance to convey his real messages, you can check out this video.

Do I look like a big corporation to you?

emma.hitzke@intel.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:06:23 GMT

Just because you’re a small or medium-sized business doesn’t mean you don’t deserve benchmark data that’s relevant to your environment. In fact, the right kinds of comparisons are critical for you and your decision-making. Why? Because those performance differences can mean the difference between good and great service to your customers, or cost savings that boost your bottom-line, or maybe even help you better use your scarce resources.

That’s why Intel brings you independent and reliable benchmarks that mean something for companies like yours. For example, for our latest entry-level servers, the new Intel® Xeon® processor 3400 series, Principled Technologies* Inc. conducted a benchmark based on applications that most small and medium businesses use to run their data, web, and email exchange servers. Now you have meaningful results that you can actually use to make an informed decision about transitioning from a desktop-based server to a real server or even upgrading from an older Intel Xeon processor-based server to this new generation.

Curious what Principled Technologies found? Well, the Intel Xeon processor X3450-based server delivered 119% more performance than a desktop-based server. So, that means you can do things more than twice as fast. Plus, the energy efficiency was significant too – with an 87% increase in performance-per-watt compared to the desktop-based server and 136% more than a previous generation Intel Xeon processor.

So, whether you’re looking to transition to your first real server or it’s time to refresh your hardware, you can see what the business benefits will be – more productivity and increased energy efficiency (which can equate to utility savings and simply being a better environmental citizen). And one more thing, the benchmark also showed that the Intel Xeon processor x3450 could do all of that using only 60 percent of its capacity. That means plenty of room for future growth. Now that’s big!

Check out the benchmark results for yourself here in the PDF document. And, if you want to see more, you can visit http://www.intel.com/performance/server/

Talk to your Intel IT solution provider reseller about these results and what they can mean for your business: (http://premierlocator.intel.com)

Reporting live from the Intel booth at Oracle OpenWorld

jason.t.beane@intel.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:23:43 GMT

At Intel, we not only pack a lot of performance in a small form factor, we also pack a lot of great demos and theater presentations into our booth at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco (South Moscone, booth #1621). We have 5 demos from 5 of our customers—Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun—and 3 other demos showcasing Wind River, Intel’s SOA Expressway product, and last, but certainly not least, Intel’s amazing and upcoming Nehalem-EX processor, which you heard Michael Dell praise in his keynote this morning.

Over the course of the three days of our booth at OOW (Monday through Wednesday this week), we will have over 35 brief presentations that will help you plan your requirements for your next generation data center. They are short and sweet, and you can ask all the questions you want. If you simply attend a presentation and get a few more stamps form our demo stations, you can enter to win one of two netbooks that will be given away at the end of each day.

Outside of our booth, you may find us presenting in various partners’ booths and we hope to see you in a session we are having later today (see info below). We had an amazing session yesterday from resident Intel genius, Steve Shaw. The huge room was filled to capacity. At this other session today we will be giving away a netbook. Here are the logistics for today’s session:

ID#: S309892

Title: Ten Ways to Improve J2EE Application Performance on Multicore Systems

Track: Oracle Develop: Enterprise Java and Oracle WebLogic

Date: 13-OCT-09

Time: 17:30 - 18:30

Venue: Hilton Hotel

Room: Yosemite B

We hope to see you around somewhere at Oracle OpenWorld, but if for some reason we miss you entirely, please visit www.intel.com/server for more info on Intel’s fantastic products. Also, please visit Channel Intel on youtube for some videos from the event.

Michael Dell is Bullish on Nehalem-EX in Oracle Open World Keynote

bryce.olson@intel.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:32:43 GMT

Nehalem-EX has been in the news quite a bit over the past several months.

First, in May, Intel described how Nehalem-EX will be at the heart of the next generation of intelligent and expandable high-end Intel server platforms, delivering a number of new technical advancements (Intel Nehalem Architecture, Quick Path Interconnects, 16 threads, 24MB cache, new RAS features like MCA-Recovery, 16 DIMM slots per socket, 128 threads on 8 Socket systems) and boost enterprise computing performance (the greatest gain in generational performance ever seen at Intel.)

Next at IDF in September Intel described how Nehalem-EX would deliver a bigger generational performance improvement than that delivered by the Intel Xeon 5500 processor (including a 3X Nehalem-EX gain in database performance); a large shift in Xeon scalability with over 15 >8S systems anticipated and expandability for the most data demanding enterprise applications, the addition of about 20 RAS capabilities traditionally found in the Intel® Itanium processor family – along with a demonstration of MCA-Recovery. IBM announced their upcoming BladeCenter products that will support 4S Nehalem-EX blades and Super-Micro announced a 1U box, specifically targeted at HPC. Staying on the HPC theme, Mark Seager from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was also quoted with stating that “Nehalem-EX allows us to invest in science, not the computer science of porting and adapting software to new architectures, but real science. Nehalem EX is an innovative SMP on a chip solution that provides us access to a “super node” … The result is an astonishing new level of performance.”

And Oracle Open World on October 13^th, the drumbeat for Nehalem-EX continued. Michael Dell in his Oracle Open World Keynote today discussed how Nehalem-EX will provide a true leap in performance, with up to 9x the memory bandwidth and 3x the database performance vs. prior generation. And he mentioned that Dell’s unique implementation of the memory architecture will allow the most cost effective scaling, with 4S systems up to 1TB of DRAM (64 Dimms x 16GB Memory sticks) enabling customers to run their entire database in system memory. He also mentioned that standard based systems are driving new efficiencies with applications like Oracle, where Dell’s data shows Oracle apps run better on x86 vs. proprietary architectures, up to 200% better. Check out this short video from the keynote and watch what Michael Dell had to say.

Keep your eyes on the Server Room for more Nehalem-EX news as it comes between now and launch. And visit the Intel booth at South Moscone Booth #1621 to learn more.

Bryce

Ten Ways to Improve J2EE Application Performance on Multi-Core Systems

khun.ban@intel.com — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:08:13 GMT

Software scalability has been a big issue recently. While modern servers are incredibly fast, many software solutions simply are not able to take advantage of it. There are many reasons for this. Some are easy to address and some require changes to the software. Intel performance engineer and Oracle WebLogic performance engineer will jointly give a talk at Oracle OpenWorld on this topic.

Here is the session information:

ID#: S309892

Title: Ten Ways to Improve J2EE Application Performance on Multi-Core Systems

Track: Oracle Develop: Enterprise Java and Oracle WebLogic

Date: 13-OCT-09

Time: 17:30 - 18:30

Venue: Hilton Hotel, Room: Yosemite B

Here is the abstract:

The current economic environment and the new focus on being green demand greater efficiency from every IT shop, big and small alike. In this session, you will learn how to improve Java application scalability by using Oracle WebLogic Server on the latest multi-core systems. It examines various software and hardware features for getting the best performance out of your applications. In particular, it explores the pros and cons of 32-bit versus 64-bit environments and how having multiple Java virtual machine instances can reduce heap pressure and improve cache locality. It also discusses operating system and hardware features such as large pages and solid-state drives and their impacts on J2EE application performance.

As a bonus, we will be giving away a Netbook at the end of the talk.

We also wrote a technical paper on the topics that will be covered in this talk. You can find this technical paper at http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/java-application-server-optimization-for-multi-core-systems/ .