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

The Intel XEON Processor 5500 is the new world record holder in >30 top performance benchmarks for 2-socket servers. Check out this video with Pat Gelsinger at the launch event in Santa Clara.

You can also check out all the performance results here: Server Performance Summary - Intel® Xeon® Processor

I'll be up front, I really don't know what Brittany Spears, Miley Cyrus or Susan Boyle would say about moving from RISC to the Xeon 5500 processor!. What I can share is the feedback that I'm getting direct from customers. I'm currently out on the road and have got some real feedback direct from customers on why they are looking at migrating their solutions from RISC  processors to Xeon processors.

Over the past couple of days I have had the opportunity to meet directly with individual customers and hosted a roundtable with several customers to discuss their plans to replace their RISC based infrastructure. The conversation has been very open and frank and has not been about 'should I move' but more focused on 'how do I make the move'. As could be expected the down economy is placing big taxes on the ability of IT organizations to support their business units need for organic growth in a flat to down IT spending environment. A big priority for most of the customers that I spoke with is how to reduce their overall TCO while still meeting the increased demands being placed on IT by their business Partners. Most of the customers are already engaged in active projects to assess moving from RISC or are building their plans to make this migration.

During the roundtable I had opportunity to share the latest Xeon 5500 processor performance comparisons Vs the main SPARC and POWER based solutions out there. There was great rejoicing and joy (ok I'm taking poetic license here) in the roundtable when we share some of the results that we highlighted when we launched the Xeon 5500 processor just over 3 weeks ago. So I want to spread the joy and let you read for yourself the performance and price performance benefits.

We compared the Xeon 5570 processor vs the top UltraSPARCT2+ in a 2 socket configuration. We took best published results on spec.org and sap (so no funny games at play). The results comparing best UltraSPARCT2+ vs best Xeon 5500 with 1 taken as baseline for SPARC redults were amazing

- 20% better on SAP-SD

- 62% better java performance for Specjbb2005

- 69%better for integer performance SPECIntrate-2006

- 75% better for floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with 32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are offered at approx $11,000 whereas the UltraSPARCT2+ is at $36,000.

Compared the Xeon 5570 processor vs the top POWER6 in a 2 socket configuration gave even more staggering results. At the roundtable today customers were amazed. They keep hearing that POWER 6 has leading performance and more GHz so better performance. Right?. Wrong is the answer and I noticed many customers scribbling down the comparisons. Again taking 1 as baseline for POWER results

- 150% better on SAP-SD

- 190% better java performance for Specjbb2005

- 126%better for integer performance SPECIntrate-2006

- 90%better for floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with 32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are 92% less expensive than equivalent POWER 6 offerings.

I only shared the specific comparisons vs RISC and have not gone into the architectural advancements of the Xeon 5500 processor and how it addresses real business needs that have been flagged to us. There have been lots of other blogs out in cyberspace over the last few weeks on improvements in IO, low latency etc. so you don't need my 2 cents.

I think now is the time to make the move from RISC, what do you think?

With the introduction of the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series last month, I wrote a blog that discussed that server refresh was an intelligent investment in that it could deliver a rapid payback on investment. For the past few years, I have been working to understand the costs and benefits of server replacement and there are a few conclusions I can draw.

1)      Server Refresh is not new concept.  This approach has existed for decades.  People replace technology as it ages because new software and new technologies enable better business capabilities and as technology ages, the warranty expires and incidence of failure increases. How many of you still have your first mp3 player?

2)      ROI and Refresh Vary. The rate of refresh is a balance of the investment required (purchase, install, removal, validation, etc) and the savings achieved (operational costs, cost avoidance, employee productivity) balanced with the business opportunities available to you (business growth or new business markets, cost of capital, revenue generating investments)

3)      One Size Does not fit all.  Every business looks at financials and opportunities for their business a little differently and calculates their costs and savings differently.

So a few months ago, I embarked with some of my peers, with Intel IT, and industry leading ROI and TCO consultant Alinean, to apply what I have been learning and build an interactive tool to help you model your savings opportunity for server refresh and replacement. 

We identified and were able to model eleven cost and savings categories (both pluses and minuses) in the Server Refresh ROI calculation and make these cost category assumptions able to be included, excluded or modified by you.  You can model and view scenario output real time and print/email reports to share with others.

I invite you to learn more about the tool with this informal how-to-use guide , or better yet, use the tool and estimate how much you could save replacing old servers with new.  Try the new Intel® Xeon® processor-based Server Refresh Savings Estimator today.

You can provide feedback through the tool’s registration process or by responding directly on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you either way.

Thanks, Chris

Datacenter Dynamic Power Management – Intelligent Power Management on Intel Xeon® 5500

With newly released Intel Xeon® 5500 Processor family, it comes with a new breed of datacenter power management technology - Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager (Node Manager in short).

As a former datacenter engineering manager, I had personal experience of the management issues at datacenters, especially dealing with power allocations and cooling – we often assumed the worse case scenario as we could not predict when the server power consumption will peak. When it did peak, we had no way to control it. It is like driving with blindfold and hope for the best outcome. The safest bet was to make the road as wide as possible - leave enough headroom for the power budget, so that we would not run into power issues. But it resuled in under utilized power, or stranded power, that is quite a waste.

Over the course of last several years, we met with many IPDC (internet portal datacenter) companies. We heard over and over again of their datacenter power management challenges, which was even worse than I experienced. Many of the IPDC companies we talked with leased racks from datacenter service providers under strict power limits per rack. The number of servers per rack they can fit had direct impact to their bottomline. They did not want to under-populate the racks, as they had to pay more rent for the same amount of servers; they could not over-populate the racks as it would be over the power limits. Their power management issues could be best summerized as the following:

·        Over-allocation of power: Power allocation to servers does not match actual server power consumption. Power is typically allocated for worst case scenario based on server nameplate. Static allocation of power budget based on worst case scenario leads to inefficiencies and does not maximize use of available power capacity and rack space.

·        Under-population of rack space: As a direct result of the over-allocation problem, there is a lot of empty space on racks. When the business needs more compute capacity, they have to pay more for additional racks. There are not enough datacenter spaces for them to rent. As a result, they had to go to other cities even other countries – increased operational cost and supporting staff.

·        No capacity planning: There is not effective means to forecast and optimize power and performance dynamically at rack level. To improve power utilization, datacenters needs to track actual power and cooling consumption and dynamically adjust workload and power distribution for optimal performance at rack and datacenter levels.

This is where the Node Manager comes to play. Let’s take a look at what Node Manager and its companion software tool provided by Intel for rack and group level power management – Intel® Data Center Manager (DCM) will do:

Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager (Node Manager)

Node Manager is an out-of-band (OOB) power management policy engine embedded in Intel server chipsets. Processors carry the capability to regulate their power consumption through the manipulation of the P- and T-states. Node Manager works with the BIOS and OS power management (OSPM) to perform this manipulation and dynamically adjust platform power to achieve maximum performance and power for a single node. Node Manager has the following features:

·        Dynamic Power Monitoring: Measures actual power consumption of a server platform within acceptable error margin of +/- 10%. Node Manager gathers information from PSMI instrumented power supplies, provides real-time power consumption data singly or as a time series, and reports through IPMI interface.

·        Platform Power Capping: Sets platform power to a targeted power budget while maintaining maximum performance for the given power level. Node Manager receives power policy from an external management console through IPMI interface and maintains power at targeted level by dynamically adjusting CPU p-states.

·        Power Threshold Alerting: Node Manager monitors platform power against targeted power budget. When the target power budget cannot be maintained, Node Manager sends out alerts to the management console

Intel® Data Center Manager (DCM)

DCM is software technology that provides power and thermal monitoring and management for servers, racks and groups of servers in datacenters. It builds on Node Manager and customers existing management consoles to bring platform power efficiency to End Users. DCM implements group level policies that aggregate node data across the entire rack or data center to track metrics, historical data and provide alerts to IT managers. This allows IT managers to establish group level power policies to limit consumption while dynamically DCM provides allows data centers to increase rack density, manage power peaks, and right size the power and cooling infrastructure. It is a software development kit (SDK) designed to plug-in to software management console products. It also has a reference user interface which was used in this POC as proxy for a management software product. Key DCM features are:

·        Group (server, rack, row, PDU and logical group) level monitoring and aggregation of power and thermals

·        Log and query for trend data for upto one year

·        Policy driven intelligent group power capping

·        User defined group level power alerts and notifications

·        Support of distributed architectures (across multiple racks)

What the combination of DCM and Node Manager will do to datacenter power management? Here is the magic part… With the DCM at group and rack level setting policies, Node Manager can dynamically report the power consumed by a server and adjust it within certain range, so that the overall power consumption of the rack or a particular server group could be managed within a given target. Why this is important? Let me use a real example to explain it:

IPDC Company XYZ (a name I cannot disclose in public) has a mission critical workload at their datacenter that runs 24x7 and there are workload fluctuations during the day. The CPU utilization is mostly at 50~60%, with few cases that it will jump to 100%, typical for datacenter operations. To be on the safe side, the current solution is to do a pre-qualification of the Xeon® 5400 server for the worst case at 100% CPU utilization which ran at ~300W. They used 300W for power allocation, which was considered significantly lower than the nameplate value of the power supply (650W).

With Xeon® 550, for the same workload at 100% throughput, the platform power consumption goes down to 230W, a 70W reduction from the previous generation CPU – a good reason to switch to a new platform due to the advance intelligent power optimization features on Xeon® 5500. But the story does not end there…

On top of that, we further analyze the effect of power capping using Node Manager and DCM. After many tests, we noticed that if we cap at 170W and the performance of impact for workload at 60% CPU utilization and blow is almost negligible. This means, that we 170W power capping, the platform can deliver the same level of services most of the time, with 50W less (230W-170W) power consumption. For occasional spike that is above 60% CPU utilization, there will be some performance impact. However, since the Company XYZ operates at below 60% CPU utilization most of the time, the performance impacts are tolerable. As a result, we can squeeze more power from the power allocation using the dynamic power management feature of Node Manager and DCM.

What does this mean to the Company XYZ? Well, we can do the math. The rack they lease today has the limit of 2,200W/rack. With the current Xeon® 5400 servers, they can put upto 7 servers per rack at 300W per server. With Xeon® 5500, they can safely put 9 servers at 230W per server – a 28% increase of the server density on the rack. Top it up, by using Node Manager and DCM to manage the power at rack level with power limit of 2,200W and dynamically adjust the power allocation among the servers, we can put at least 12 servers at an average of 170W power allocation per server – a 71% increase of the server density comparing with the situation today! This means a great saving for the Company XYZ. In this case, the power consumption of each server on the rack could go above 170W, or lower than 170W. DCM dynamically adjusts the power capping policy while holding the line for entire rack power consumption below 2,200W.

Of course, the power management result varies from workload to workload. There has to be workload-based optimization in order to achieve the best result. Also, we assume that the datacenter should be able to provide sufficient cooling for devices that consume power within the given power limit. Even though, the result we get from this test could not be applied universally to all IPDC customers, we have finally had a platform that can dynamically and intelligently monitor and adjust the platform power based on workload. For datacenter managers, you can manage power at rack level and datacenter level with optimized power allocation to fully utilize the datacenter power. Are you ready to give it a try?

For readers of my February Blog, I talked about being so excited that i felt like a kid on Christmas morning when it came to our upcoming Nehalem launch and shared a story about some customers I talked with.  Well I can now give you your presents and a little background on the experience I had back in February.

• The two customers i interviewed were Thomson-Reuters (James Powell - CTO) and Intel IT (Elwood Coslett, Director Engineering Computing).  You can view our discussion at http://www.intel.com/business/xeon/seminar.htm
• You can learn more about the Xeon 5500 capabilities at www.intel.com/business/xeon
• You can gain insights and connect with industry insiders on the next generation of server technology at the new Server Solutions Insider community

Time to play with our new technology toys.

Chris

Our new product, the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series, has ushered in what we at Intel call a new generation of intelligent server processors. Before I wrote this blog I had to look up the definition of intelligence (American Heritage Dictionary):

In•tel•li•gence n 1.a. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. b. The faculty of thought and reason.

In this context, I’d like to discuss two topics. (1) An Intelligent Product (2) An Intelligent Choice

An Intelligent Product: (the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge)

Key technology enhancements to the Xeon 5500 include a suite of new features and capabilities that enable servers utilizing these new processor to serve a wide range of server usages (from basic business to high performance computing) (from single threaded applications to well threaded applications) (from non virtualized to highly virtualized environments) and makes these servers adaptable to the environment you want to deploy it into.

ð       Intel Hyper-Threading Technology is back boosting performance for well threaded applications

ð       Intel Intelligent Power Technology adjusts server power consumption real time to workload

o       Automated Low Power States reduces CPU, Memory and I/O power without impacting performance

o        Integrated Power Gates dynamically turn cpu cores that are not in use to reduce idle power near 10W

ð       Intel Turbo-Boost Technology speeds up your processor when application demands peak

ð       Intel QuickPath Technology provides industry leading server bandwidth (up to 3.5x prior Xeon)

The benefits for IT and Business?

ð       A server platform that can adapt to your application environment allowing you to deploy it in one environment today with the knowledge you can repurpose it tomorrow, if needed

ð       A server platform that can adapt you changing workload demands over the course of a day, saving power when demands are low and better performance when you need it most

Read the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series platform brief to learn about these technologies

Visit this video about the new product and the technologies listed above

An Intelligent Choice: (the faculty of thought and reason)

Economic times are tough and we’re all struggling with spending choices (or not spending) at both a personal and corporate level. However, business spends about 2/3 of their IT budget maintaining existing servers (source IDC). IDC further estimates that 40% of the servers installed today are 4yr+ single core servers with another 40% being 3 year old dual-core. These servers are consuming a lot of valuable resources. With a heavy % of IT budget spent on operating costs, the challenge is that if you cut spending, you are cutting innovation. This limits business competitiveness.

What is the option? …. Server Refresh. Compared to installed single core Xeon servers, these new Xeon processors enable up to 9x performance per server, a 9:1 server consolidation opportunity (with flat performance), lowering operating costs by an estimated 90% and delivering an estimated up to 8 month payback on investment. That means that an investment in a new server today can pay for itself in less than a year, helping you to self fund more innovation or helping to boost the bottom line of your organization. If your environment is dual-core based, the opportunity is about a 3:1 consolidation opportunity.

               Download this pdf to understand the 8 month estimate

View a video demonstration highlighting the 9:1 consolidation and 3:1 consolidation

In summary the Xeon 5500 series is an intelligent product in it’s capability to adapt to both it’s application and user environment and an intelligent choice for IT investment delivering an estimated up to 8 month payback – much better than you can do in the stock market, bank or many other projects.

I think that this is the right product at the right time.  What do you think? ... I'd like to hear your reactions.

Chris

Have you ever worked on a project, or with a team than just “clicked”?  Everyone was excited to be at work.  They worked well together.  And while there were of course many challenges, everyone worked through them and the end result was something special? I worked on one such team back in the mid-90’s.  The team was a silicon design and marketing team here at Intel, and the end result was the P6 processor (the official name was the Pentium Pro processor).  That may be too long ago for many of you to remember this product…I guess I’m showing my age.  But the P6 was a revolutionary product.

So what made this team click?  I think it was the fact that we all knew we were doing something special; something that had never been done before. The P6 was the first out-of-order, Super-scale, Super-pipelined, Speculative execution, glue less MP x86 processor every produced.  And the jump in performance as compared to previous generation x86 processors was the biggest ever seen at that time.

What is interesting is that most people, who worked on that project, have a very similar view.  All look very fondly back at that project, there were special friendships created during that project which exist today, and even though many years have past, and many project have come and gone since them, the P6 was something special; a once-in-a-lifetime project which most remember as the best project the ever worked on.  I’ve been at Intel for 23 years, and the P6 is still the best project I ever worked on.

So why all the reminiscing?  Because the soon to be released Nehalem project (aka Intel(r) Xeon(r) processor 5500 Series for servers and workstations, and also known as the Intel® Core i7 processor for desktop)  has many of the same attributes as the P6 project.  While times have changed, and working in a global environment means you cannot duplicate all the things that made the P6 team so special (in particular a close, tight nit group of people working at a single site), there are many things about the Nehalem project which make it special.  While I can’t disclose all the details just yet, look for follow-on to this blog after the product launch where I can describe some if the things which truly make the Nehalem product revolutionary.  Things that make me just sit back and say wow!  What this team accomplished is truly amazing!