A MONSTER CHIP IS COMING. The next generation of MP processor is targeted for production later this year, and by all accounts it is going to be a monster. Nehalem-EX is part of the Nehalem family of processors, but compared to its siblings it has the highest cores/threads count, largest shared cache, highest CPU-to-CPU bandwidth, highest I/O bandwidth, highest memory capacity, highest memory bandwidth, greatest scalability, and highest level of Reliability/Availability/Serviceability. It’s expected to bring a gargantuan, unprecedented leap in capabilities and performance--the biggest leap in all of Xeon product history.

IT’S TARGETED AT “BIG BOXES”. Big box servers are multiprocessor systems using the most capable processors and platform components. These systems are targeted at applications and usages that require the largest memory footprints, the highest amounts of single-box processing power (for workloads that don’t decompose well into lots of independent threads) and/or advanced levels of RAS. Such systems are typically the best choice for large databases, ERP apps, Business Intelligence apps, large-scale server consolidation and business-critical virtualization, mission critical applications and large scale high performance computing.

IT USES THE SAME PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY AS THE SUCCESSFUL XEON 5500, BUT MORE OF IT. Just like with Xeon 5500, the Nehalem micro-architecture brings improved single-threaded performance via IPC (Instructions per Clock) enhancements and Intel’s Hi-k 45nm manufacturing process. Greater multi-threaded performance comes via Hyper-Threading and more cores. But while the Xeon 5500 has up to 4 cores/16threads per socket, the Nehalem-EX monster doubles that to 8 cores/16 threads.

HAS A BEEFIER MEMORY AND INTERCHIP COMMUNICATION SUBSYSTEMS. Monster thread processing capabilities require monster size feeding to bring out the best performance. Nehalem-EX’s raw processing potential is made viable by a heavy duty memory subsystem and inter-chip communication system.

Nehalem-EX has 24MB of shared level 3 cache--that’s 50% more than the current Xeon 7400 and 200% more than Xeon 5500. The memory channel bandwidth was increased to 9-times that of Xeon 7400. And it’s all attached to up to 16 DIMM slots per socket (that’s 64DIMMs slots for 4 sockets)—double the current generation of Xeon 7400.

In a multi-socket system, processors need to communicate with each other in order to most efficiently coordinate their shared workload. They also need lots of I/O bandwidth. Nehalem-EX has four QuickPath Interconnects on every socket--double that of Xeon 5500. The four QPI links enable Nehalem-EX processors to be directly connected to each other in a 4 socket system. This offers significant performance advantage over a so-called ring architecture wherein some processor-to-processor communication must go through an intermediary processor. The extra QPIs also mean that there’s plenty of CPU to I/O bandwidth.

EXPECTED TO BRING THE GREATEST LEAP FORWARD IN XEON PERFORMANCE EVER. On key server performance benchmarks (e.g. SPEC_int_rate, SPEC_floating point_rate, TPC-C, etc) Xeon 5500 using Nehalem technology brought gains of over 100-200% greater than prior generation. Generational gains of this magnitude come along just about once a decade. Nehalem-EX’s generation-to-generation performance gains are expected to be substantially higher than those of Xeon 5500. We’ve already seen measured memory bandwidth of 9X vs. prior generation. That’s an early indication of the level by which new performance records will be set when this monster chip comes to market.

Related Topics:

NHM-EX Press Fact Sheet

NHM-EX May 26^th Press Briefing Video – condensed version

IBM 8Socket Demo Video

NHM-EX--A New Standard

I was thinking about what to write in my next blog and what I could share beyond what I have written previously about Intel Vs RISC in terms of TCO, performance and the customers that are choosing to move.

Luckily I didn't have to think too long on a Friday morning as a a topic came to mind instantly. There are numerous articles flying around this morning that picked up on the Oracle comments yesterday about how SPARC based systems compare to Intel. Thanks for providing me with an appropriate topic.

So in case you missed it, there was a question and answer session with Larry Ellison. When asked about SPARC, this was the reply "SPARC is much more energy efficient than Intel while delivering the same performance on a per socket basis. This is not a green issue, its an economic issue. Today, database centers are paying as much for electricity to run their computers as they pay to buy computers. SPARC machines are much less expensive to run than Intel machines"

1) SPARC more energy efficient than Intel?  Seriously, in what parallel universe does that exists?

SUN continues to use watts per thread as measure of energy efficiency. The recognized industry standard benchmark for measuring energy efficiency is SPECpowerand I don't see any SPARC based results in the 91 results published. The absence of a result certainly says something very clear to me - no story.

These UltraSPARCT2+ systems get loaded with a lot of memory to deliver the their results, so when you look at overall system power (what people care about) they are not as energy efficient as Intel based systems.

SPECpower is effectively based of SPECJbb-2005 so another way of loking at this is to look at the SPECJbb-2005 results for a 4 socket UltraSPARcT2+ system and a Xeon 7400 system. The 4s UltraSPARCT2+ delivers 693k BOPs while Xeon 7400 is 532kBOPs. So you conclude that SPARC is better than Xeon?. That would be the wrong conclusion

UltraSPARCT2+ system would consume 1525 watts Vs Xeon 7400 at 816 watts. If you look at BOPs per watt (another way of looking at energy efficiency and performance) then you would see that Xeon 7400 is 43% more energy efficient. Doing a similar comparison with Xeon 5400 (I haven't even talked about our latest Xeon 5500, Nehalem) would be up to 77% more efficient than UltraSPARCT2+.

And lastly before I forget to mention the 4s UltraSPARCT2+ had 128GB memory and costs over $150,000for the system, while Xeon 7400 based system had 64GB memory and costs around $32,000.

2) SPARC deliver same performance on a per socket basis?

2S Xeon 5500 has performance leadership over 2S UltaSPARCT2+ across a wide range of benchmarks. Up to 70% more performance and up to 60% lower system cost. 4S Xeon 7400 has price/performance leadership over 4S UltraSPARCT2+, UltraSPARCT2+ results achieved with system loaded with lots of memory that drives the cost up to 3-4Xthat of Xeon 7400 system

3) SPARC machine are less expensive to run?. I can't for the life of me work this one out!.

Hardware systems based on Intel have leading price/performance (read cheaper), lower energy needs (so electrivity bill lower) and any software product with a license per core strcuture is less expensive on Xeon system than an 8 core UltraSPARcT2+ (which also has higher multipler per core)

That's all for now folks. I just wanted to share some data on why I know that SPARC machines are much MORE expensive to run than Intel machines

Back in the ‘dot-com’ days – many companies would build datacenters across the globe with one thing in mind – performance – and costs weren’t an issue.  It was all about getting the job done, with little concern about the costs.  Well, times have changed and companies have become more energy conscious, not only to become better stewards in using natural resources, but consumers are looking for companies who can design and develop products that can meet their own ‘green energy’ power needs.  It’s not as important anymore to make or build something to be the ‘best of class’ it also has to be ‘efficient’ while being the best. 

Corporate initiatives to reduce power but still “KTBR” (Keep the Business Running) are imperative to sustaining business today.  Not only do you need the best performing servers – but they need to be efficient at what is done.  Most of us would agree to cut overhead costs with energy efficiency versus headcount cuts.  It’s better for the environment, better for the business, and benefits everyone.

Enterprise companies have been ‘going green’ for a while now.  Initiatives like Climate Savers, LessWatts.org and others have been pushing the technical envelope on how to reduce power usage for businesses large and small.  Intel has a large hand in contributing to the conservative ecology in power usage.  People need computers, computers need power, and power is used – but can the power be reduced and still give the same experience?  With the Xeon 5500 Series platforms – the answer is a resounding - YES!

You’ve most likely read about the performance stats around Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) Processors, but I want to show you how their efficiency can give back to your enterprise. Not only do the Xeon 5500 Series give you power and efficiency – there is more technology ‘under the hood’ to be looked at.  Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager has been released in the Xeon 5520 and 5500 Chipsets (previously called Tylersburg-EP). 

There are several scenarios we can go through concerning server workloads – but let’s take a real world example of Company “X” (I can’t tell you who right now) but their workloads have been very stable and growing over the past few years.  One of the issues is that their servers are heavily worked during the beginning of the week, pushing the server farm at 85-90% utilization.  The work is reduced gradually over the week and by Friday; the server utilization is around 10-20%. 

As you can see in the chart above, the server farm would start out the week with 85-90% load and the servers would run at full power the entire week. This would burn energy at 90% cost, even though the workload had died off toward the end of the week to about 15% - not very efficient.  It’s like leaving the stove on all day long, and only using it for a few minutes when you cooked a meal.

Once we brought in the Xeon 5500 based systems, we also enabled ACPI power management which is much more pronounced with the Xeon 5500 because of the increased number of P-states.  We are able to add power capping using Node Manager to limit the power usage by the racks to meet the daily requirements of the customer workloads.  This helped us to have the power available when needed, and reduce the power when the workloads aren’t as power hungry. 

Another key feature that we’re going after is to increase the server density using Node Manager and Intel Datacenter Manager by measuring the power usage and capping the maximum power utilized by the entire rack.  The benefit is that with Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager, the data comes in real-time and we can modify the power curves on a regular basis through the server console. 

Like many customers, power savings can have a large impact in your overhead costs.  If this sounds like a solution that your company could benefit from, then definitely ask your favorite OEM when their Node Manager enabled Xeon 5500 series platform will be available.  Intel Server Products are available today and ready for your datacenter – the ROI is estimated to be a short 8 months, so a little green goes a long way.

I enjoy running, and I typically train with a heart rate monitor to help me stay in a certain zone during my workouts.  When I was out on a run the other day and started to settle into my zone, instead of my mind drifting off to a peaceful place (like it should), for some reason it started drawing parallels about the human heart and Turbo Boost Technology.  I decided to play along as I was my own captive audience.

Let’s start with the heart, which as a pump has evolved over a long time to be pretty darn reliable and adapt quickly based on the needs of its owner.  It’s nominally rated at about 70-100 beats per minute (BPM), which is all it needs to do to support most activities during a normal day.  If you take care of it and operate it within spec, it should provide many years of reliable service in that range. 

However, we know the heart is capable is much higher rates, and most every day I operate it well above the rated 70-100 BPM during my runs.  As long as I take in enough air, don’t overheat, or don’t cramp up, my heart can maintain these higher rates without much problem.  In fact, if I feel REALLY good on a particular day, I can probably go above my max heart rate, but it’s not recommended and a lot of bad things can happen (a typically accepted max BPM calculation is 220 BPM – your age).

How does this relate to Turbo Boost Technology?

Xeon® 5500 processors are spec’d at a rated frequency (for example, 2.93 GHz), and the processor and platform are designed to operate for an indefinite period of time at that frequency.  With Turbo Boost, the processor is now able to run higher than rated frequency whenever you need a boost in performance, provided it meets the following conditions:  (1) the operating system requests the extra performance (I want to go out running), and (2) the processor has power, current, or temperature headroom (I’m getting enough air, and not overheating or cramping up).  As long as those conditions are met, the processor will run at those higher frequencies to maximize performance whenever it’s needed, either for short periods, long periods, or somewhere in-between.  When your performance demands drop, the processor frequency drops down to normal.

How high can you Turbo?

Similar to your maximum heart rate, we need to set Turbo Boost frequency limits in the Xeon® 5500 processors.  For example, the highest Turbo frequency the 2.93 GHz processor can support is 3.33 GHz, which is a 400 MHz jump.  While there still could be platform headroom even at the highest Turbo Boost frequency (I’m still feeling good at my max heart rate), we need to set these limits to ensure the processors will function reliably for a good long time.

So let your servers get some exercise with Turbo Boost – they’ll thank you for it.

Let’s face it; it’s getting harder to measure server density in rack units, and measuring by compute threads in a rack isn’t getting any easier with the core/thread counts increasing year over year.  I still remember from 12 years ago when Intel was acquiring companies who were really good at piecing together single core multi-processor systems and those systems were literally hanging from engine hoists (for demo purposes) because they were so large… I believe they had eight Intel Pentium Pro processors and 128MB of RAM. In comparison - today’s netbooks have more 4 times that amount of memory, in a base configuration.

Modern server micro-architectures have such a large increase in transistors alone, that it’s hard to equate the exponential growth in the complexity of the systems. While power must still be consumed, the same amount of power can be distributed across several cores and platforms now - which is more power efficient, but it also adds more complexity as the number of nodes increase. But just because you have more nodes, doesn’t mean that you can’t manage their efficiency.

David Ott (from the Intel Software Services Group) presents many of the provisioning/power/manageability problems at hand in the video below (5m16s), and explains how Intel is providing the 'touch points' to manage server platforms:

With the upcoming Intel Xeon 5500 Series Processors, not only do you have a high-performing platform; and in Intel fashion they’re also more power-efficient.  With the capabilities to self-throttle power usage via managed P-states per node or be managed via policies by group, time, etc.  Managing for servers isn’t new, but the way that Intel is doing it is a huge leap ahead in manageability at the node level.

So I ask:

• What manageability tools are you using for your enterprise servers today?
• Is Intel Node Manager on your (or your OEM's) roadmap to gather information on a ‘per server’ basis?
• Would more discrete information enable you to run your datacenter more efficiently?
• What manageability items do you struggle within your own datacenter, and what would you like to see in future platforms?

If Power Manageability is new to you, I highly suggest you check out Intel Dynamic Power Datacenter Manger, and if you're running a Linux based server - please check out http://www.lesswatts.org to ensure you have the latest ACPI compliant kernel.

And as a fun exit, here’s a video that we shot in one of our labs – further strengthening the need for virtualization

(and more importantly – the need for virtualized networks!)

Every morning we hear about the staggering job losses mounting up in businesses around the world. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost so far. Unfortunately, no one seems immune from the impacts of this recession. In fact, the recession is now impacting the data center and a new segment of the work force is at risk – your servers!

Would you keep an employee who worked less than 4 hours per day, over-spent valuable resources and was someone you had to manage constantly – obviously, the answer is NO! That is the situation today with install base single-core servers.  Aging servers are a perfect target for downsizing in this tough economy. Industry analyst IDC estimates that there are approximately 30 million servers installed in businesses around the world and about 40% of those use single-core processors (4 years old or older).

Let’s look at the 2008 performance review of these single core servers.

ð       Excessive Spending Habits: For the performance they deliver, these servers take up too much space and over-consume power and cooling resources.

ð       Lazy Work Habits: A typical non virtualized server runs at only 10-15% utilization – meaning they sit idle a majority of your work day.

ð       Needs Excessive Management: Aging servers require more maintenance. Extended warranties are expensive (estimated $600-1200 per server depending on the type of server) and if you don’t extend the warranty, the risk of downtime is on IT and the business. While the costs to maintain a server vary widely , during a recent discussion with Forrester research, they indicated that an aging server can cost up 3x the costs of an in-warranty server (under standard 3 yr manufacturer support).

Continuing to use these old servers is not a wise business strategy. But if you fire your existing infrastructure, who can you hire to do the work? Simple, you hire fewer new multi-core servers running virtualization to replace a large number of install base servers.

But, is replacing them worth the effort … I mean, why fix what ain’t broke? About 2/3 of IT’s budget is consumed maintaining existing infrastructure (source Gartner), leaving a measly 1/3 for innovation and value add business capability. So in this recession, unless you are focused on reducing OpEx, the IT budget that you are cutting is likely restricting your business competitiveness and new service delivery - the value of innovation.

Replacing old servers with new offers both cost and productivity advantages for IT in addition to improved services and competitiveness for business. Read some of the success stories from businesses in 2008 where proactive IT investment commonly resulted in 30-40% reductions in total costs, enhanced business services, improved competitiveness and rapid financial ROI. In fact, the business ROI on replacing an old server with new is staggering and in many cases can pay for itself in less than 12 months, by reducing power / cooling costs, avoiding new construction, simplifying and reducing maintenance costs, reducing applicaiton and OS licensing costs and more.

What characteristics should you look for in a new server hire? (to maximize this savings and accelerate ROI)

ð       Versatile Performance. Consider a wide range of benchmarks and application usages when evaluating capability of the server you intend to hire.  Servers hired today for a specific task may likely get re-purposed over their lifetime.

               Also ... if your workload is specialized and data demanding (like database / enterprise resource planning / business intelligence) consider a specialized

               server with unique skills, like larger compute, I/O and memory scalability to handle these larger workloads with increased reliability and headroom for peak loads.

ð       Energy Efficiency. Newer multi-core servers feature nearly 10x the performance / watt of single core servers. Use the SPECPower benchmark to assess which servers are the most energy efficient.

ð       Virtualization. When virtualizing servers, hire servers that can support robust consolidation ratios and built for flexibility and versatility. Many new hardware-assist technologies help boost the ability to migrate virtual machines (application/OS combination) from one server to another.

ð       Standardization. Unlike hiring employees where diversity is valued and encouraged, using a smaller number of reference designs in your IT environment, can lower operating and support costs.

A final consideration for hiring new servers is total cost of ownership. Just like hiring people, you must consider the incidental or hidden costs behind the salary and sign-on bonus (do these still exist today?). The average life for a server is 4 years. Buying an inexpensive server for your needs today may optimize today’s budget but may end up costing you over the long run in software licensing, power/cooling. Intel IT recently did an ROI analysis on buying higher end processors and found that using higher end processors reduced TCO significantly – by doing more with less.

Last year, Intel IT fired about 20,000 servers and more are expected to receive pink slips in 2009 - read more about this in the 2008 Intel ITannual perfomance report

If your goals are to lower costs, improve services and boost revenue while increasing business competitiveness, then replacing aging server infrastructure is an Intelligent Investment. Learn more at www.intel.com/go/xeon

Are your single core servers at risk of losing their jobs?  If not, they should be!

So the Question is ... Will You Cut IT Costs and Boost Business Competitiveness by downsizing your Server Infrastructure in 2009?

Chris

OK ... Selecting the right server is anything but simple, but the process should be.

Selecting the right server to meet your business needs is critical to meet the changing needs of your business. What is right for you, is not likely right for the next IT professional – Why? In my experience, every IT and business is unique. What applications you run, the technology you have deployed today and your business goals are most likely are different from your peers and competitors.

Choosing the wrong server could result in sub-optimal business and financial results. Oversizing your server can result in too much headroom and under utilization over the life of your server deployment. On the other hand, if you under undersize, you may need to replace your server earlier than you planned or deal with increased complaints from users or customers (if they complain) about unresponsive applications during peak work times.

This guide highlights the latest technology options available from Intel and helps walk you through three easy overview steps to select and size your next server.

Step 1: Needs

What do your applications demand of your server?

Step 2: Capabilities

Compare capabilities and benefits of different servers

Step 3: Match

Optimize value by matching needs to capabilities

Following my earlier blog, I promised to share answers to some of the more common questions I get from customers on 45nm and mostly about the newest product we have on 6-core 45nm: the Xeon processor 7400 series.

1. What does 45nm really mean? A nanometer represents a distance that is one billionth of a meter in length. 45nm represents the width of a single transistor and is used to describe the manufacturing technology Intel uses to create our latest generation of processors. Because of the small 45nm transistor size, Intel is able fit 2 million transistors on the period at the end of this sentence.

2. Are all 45nm transistors the same? No. Materials used in silicon manufacturing process can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Intel switched over to a high-k dielectric material (Halfnium) that helps dramatically reduce leakage current – improving the performance/watt characteristic of our processors.

3. What OEM products feature 6-core 45nm products? Servers based on the processor are expected to be announced from over 50 system manufacturers around the world, including four-socket rack servers from Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun, Supermicro and Unisys. There are four-socket blade servers from Egenera, HP, Sun and NEC and there are server designs that scale up to 16-sockets from IBM, NEC and Unisys.

4. How does 6-core affect my software licensing? Just like with other multi-core processors, licensing will depend on the software vendor. With quad-core most ISVs elected to license by socket or processor meaning that the performance enhancements came “for free” as the number of cores are increased. Recently VMware updated their definition of a “processor” to include up to 6-cores per processor (learn more) meaning that with VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 and Intel Xeon processor 7400 series, IT can deploy a higher density of virtual machines per server without an incremental increase in licensing costs. Everyone does it differently – so do your homework.

Other common questions circle around IT usage trends and how this technology can really be applied. Here is an interesting (and somewhat long) video where Intel VP and CIO Diane Bryant discusses with executives from Yahoo, Oracle, MySpace and Verisign about the challenges they face and how technology is helping them. If you choose to listen you will find answers to questions (paraphrased) like?

• What are some of the top challenges IT faces today? How can technology help?

• Is 6 core performance too much? Does IT have the ability inside their environment to take advantage of this additional compute capacity?

• Is the software ecosystem is ready for multi-core? Can today's applications take advantage of it?

• How are customers using Virtualization today and how do they see it changing over time?

• When virtualizing ... how does IT view MP servers (4 socket) vs DP (2 socket)?

• When deploying next generation technology, how important is the power capacity of the IT environment when selecting technology?

• Are Intel Xeon servers powerful and reliable enough to consider moving away from RISC or other proprietary architectures?

If I missed your burning question, just ask … I’d be happy to share. Chris