In order to deliver to the continued promise of Moore’s Law, Intel’s Information Technology team needs to enable Intel’s Silicon designers with the tools, capabilities and streamlined processes to bring higher performing processors to market every year.  The latest generation of 45nm products (ie the Intel microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem) was an especially challenging project for us. 

With Intel design computing demand growing an average of 45% year over year coupled with the rich technology capabilities in the 45nm based Nehalem micro-architecture, the computational requirements of silicon tape-out (the last stage of design before manufacturing) represented an approximate 13x increase in increase in demand from prior 65nm processors. Staring at this demand (1.2 million hours of compute demand per day) plus a need to bring products to market faster and more efficiently, our IT team realized we needed to do something different - our standard grid computing solution that was sufficient for earlier stage design work was insufficient for tape-out. 

Solution: Intel IT built a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution that currently rank in the Top 500 list of supercomputers (#261, #308, Nov 09) and feature a new parallel storage environment to support our 45nm Silicon tape-out process.  The details of this effort are captured in this whitepaper. 

In summary, the Intel IT HPC solution employs two of the world’s fastest supercomputers to create the fastest microprocessors helping Intel achieve the following results.

·         Completed 45nm tape-out in 10day, less than HALF the time of prior products

·         Delivered an estimated incremental value of $44M to Intel

I can’t wait for what tomorrow will bring as Intel IT is already upgrading and evolving this HPC solution to support our future generations of micro-processor designs. Tune in tomorrow at SuperComputing 2009 in Portland where Shesha Krishnapura from Intel IT will present more details on our HPC environment or join us December 8th, 2009 from 10-12am PST for a live chat with Intel IT experts in the Server Room

Chris (twitter)

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.

Most of the time, server ROI is measured on the data center scale, replacing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers with fewer higher-performing and more energy efficient servers.

But...have you ever wondered how much power you could save if you replaced every 4 year old server in an entire country with Xeon 5500 Nehalem-based systems?  What about how much CO2 that could be removed for those same 4-year old servers – and number of cars it effectively removes from the road?

Well, wonder no more!  Check out this short paper for an eye-opening comparison of the UK, Germany, and France, and how big of an ROI they can realize if the entire country refreshed ALL of their 4-year-old servers.  It looks at power savings, land reclamation, and monetary savings in slightly different terms, like how much space can be saved in comparison to the floor area of Notre Dame Cathedral?  You’ll need to read on to find out more… J

Additionally, all calculations were done using the Xeon ROI tool, so check it out and come up with some more interesting comparisons based on your city, state, or country data.  Be sure to post them here!

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.

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

I’d like to introduce myself as a product line manager at Intel who has spent almost a decade ensuring we are creating the best servers to solve small business challenges. Part of my role is to influence future generation products and I’d like to learn more about your challenges, needs and desires so I can ensure we address them in our next generation products.

Here is a story I have heard in the past: “Ah geez, What Now? A customer just called to tell me they tried to enter an online order for my product and my web site is nowhere to be found.  I am lucky they called, but so much for spending a Saturday at my kid’s baseball tournament! Now I need to drive an hour to my downtown office to restart and possibly fumble with my server.  You would think that the desktop system that I am using as a server would just work so I can spend my free time with my family and my work time growing my business.”  

I can’t count the number of times I have heard a similar story from customers and colleagues that are trying to grow a small business, manage their own computers and have a personal life.  The answer to their problem is simple, buy a real server based on Intel®Xeon® Processors that is designed to keep your business running 24/7.   Our latest Xeon processors and chipsets are not only validated to run 24/7, but include features such as support for error correcting code memory and RAID for server operating systems that ensure dependability and differentiate a real server from desktop system used as a server.  However, a small business should not care about all this technical jargon.   I believe they only care that their server runs 24/7 without failure, enabling them to focus on business growth and life.

What are your small business challenges?  I’m all ears.

Just wrapped up Oracle Open World…sitting at SFO, waiting for a flight back home. 

The event from a Nehalem-EX perspective was a success. Hit important points and accomplished what we had to deliver. 

Hit #1:  Michael Dell, in his key note, delivered Nehalem-EX message beautifully.  2.5x performance improvements coming from 9x memory bandwidth…compared to currently sold technology.  Thank you, Michael. 

Hit #2:  Dell placed Nehalem-EX demo at its Exhibit at Moscone West.  I missed seeing it in person but the Dell friends came to me reporting that the demo attracted a lot of attention from the audience.  Thank you again, Dell. 

Hit #3:  My Nehalem-EX demo at Intel booth was also a success.  The pre-production system ran throughout the event with 64 logical processors fully active with 1TB of Samsung DDR3 memory, running SPECjbb, stressing all the CPUs, cores, and threads.  Occasionally, I injected double-bit error to show off the MCA-Recovery function.  Windows 2008 R2 reported nicely that the system encountered a critical error but the system still running at full speed.  If not with MCA-Recovery function, I would have had blue screen each time I ran that error injection script and would have had to wait for few minutes to have the server come back up online. 

Also, I really liked the demographics of the audience this time.  Compared to the other events I went to this year, I had more conversations with the folks who actually purchase equipments, those who test new equipments at IT shops, and those from Oracle starting to realize that hardware choice does matter when selling Oracle software.  Many people specifically asked when Intel starts shipping Nehalem-EX and which specific OEM models would use Nehalem-EX.  I hope my responses to those folks were legitimate.  ;-)  I also hope Oracle sales folks now have true confidence that the Oracle software stack runs best on Intel, specifically, Nehalem-EX. 

Oracle Open World is said to be the largest IT event.  I believe that.  You don’t get to have lunch at the middle Mission St tarmac very often.  You don’t get to see four digit hotel bills very often for just couple night stay. Despite the fall storm hitting the peninsula dumping loads of water and gust knocking trees down on Tuesday, Intel booth continuously had heavy flow of traffic.  I admire the Intel team putting together our presence and admire the whole industry supporting the event. I also personally learned a lot from the event, meeting people, exchanging knowledge.  Three day booth duty is a tough one but worth it. 

Oh, and to wrap the whole trip up…

Hit #4:  cleared the wait list and getting home earlier with an earlier flight… 

AND…I wish today was Friday…