The Server Room Blog

A 45nm 6-core QnA

C_Peters — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:29:14 GMT

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

How to improve your data center energy efficiency using servers with Intel(R) Xeon(R) 7400 processors

dave_hill — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:56:27 GMT

The Intel® Xeon® 7400 Processor was officially announced just a few weeks ago and there has been phenomonal interest in this product because of it's world record breaking performance leadership as well as it's great energy efficiency.

Let's first discuss one of the primary advantages of the Intel® Xeon® 7400 Processor: Up to 50% better performance/watt and up to 10% less system power vs. 7300. As stated, this is pretty straightforward: Intel has real world results that show significant performance increases while consuming less power as compared to servers based on the previous generation Intel® Xeon(R) 7300 Processors. The performance increase can largely be attributed to designing the Xeon® 7400 processor with 6 cores based on the Intel® Core™ Microarchitecture. In addition, the primary reason for the power decrease is because Xeon® 7400 uses the latest 45nm High-K process technology instead of 65nm in the previous generation. In general, processors based on the 45nm process consume less power than the processor's rated TDP (thermal design power) value. It must be noted that power consumption can vary by processor and some processors may consume even less power and others may consume up to the processor's rated TDP value. For more details on both the performance and power, I recommend taking a look at this 3rd party review by Anandtech*: http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3414&p=1

Next, let's discuss the positive impact these servers can have on your data center. Whether you have an existing data center or plan to build a new one, there is always a fixed amount of power that is provided to that data center. Energy efficient performance, in it's simplest definition, is the ratio of performance in relation to the amount of power consumed. The higher the ratio, the more energy efficient your data center is. To accomplish this, two vectors need to be considered. The first is performance output and the second is power consumption (both when servers are operating at peak performance and when they are running at lower utilization levels or at idle). Servers based on the Intel® Xeon® 7400 processor can provide both higher performance as well as lower power, which offer some very compelling energy efficiency benefits. For example, when using virtualization multiple applications that currently run on independent servers can be consolidated on fewer, higher performing servers, while still providing performance headroom for future growth. By doing this, both acquisition and ongoing electricity/operational costs can be dramatically reduced. To see how much money you can potentially save by upgrading to servers based on the Intel® Xeon® 7400 processor, take a look at the ROI using the Intel® Xeon® Server Estimator at www.intel.com/go/xeonestimator

In summary, the best energy efficient performance can achieved using servers with Intel® Xeon® 7400 Processors. These servers provide both exceptional performance across a wide range of applications, with headroom to grow, while at the same time consuming less power as compared to previous generation Intel 7300 based servers.

Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

"Oracle OpenWorld08: XEON7400 on Sunfire X4450"

whlea — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:00:19 GMT

I ran into Barry Kittner (Intel) and Marcos Peixoto (Sun) at the Oracle OpenWorld event in San Francisco today. Sun is showing the Sunfire X4450, 4-Socket, 2U Rack Server. Sun is also talking about a unique way to evaluate the Sunfire server, check out this video to find how...

What do you think, not a bad deal is it? Check out this link for more details: TryAndBuy

"Live From" Oracle OpenWorld08--Intel Innovation Zone

whlea — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:24:49 GMT

"Live From" Oracle Open World and the Intel Innovation Zone...first impression...this is a big event. The Moscone Center here in San Francisco is rocking and Intel has some really interesting and cool demos inside the Innovation Zone. Check out this one where Intel is announcing a new Solid State Drive and demos it at the show:

Check back for more demos and show updates...

Six More Benefits of 45nm

C_Peters — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:38:31 GMT

About 3 months ago I delivered a 2-part viedo series on the benefits of 45nm process technology (part 1, part 2). As time has progressed, the intel roadmap has continued to evolve and deliver increased benefits. On Sept 8th 2008, we introduced four new 2-socket processors in our Xeon 5400 product line and this past Monday (Sept 15th), we introduced a whole new series of products for our 4-socket product line, the Xeon 7400 series (codename: Dunnington). All of these new products feature 45nm process technology and the enhanced Intel Core Microarchitecture.

Here are some highlights of the benefits available for IT solutions

 Better Performance: Xeon 7400 features up to 6-cores and 16MB cache per processor. It is staggering to think about what an individual server is now capable of doing.

o Over 1 million transactions per minute (8 socket TPC-C* result)
o Over 600,000 transactions per minute (4 socket TPC-C* result)
o Over 500,000 business operation per second (4 socket Java SPECjbb*2005 result)
o Learn more about performance results of the Xeon 7400 products here

 Energy Efficient: The performance of 45nm processors (including the 6core) is being delivered in the same power/thermal envelopes as previous quad-core processors making the performance per watt ratio particularly appealing and beneficial to managing data center space and minimizing cooling challenges while growing performance capability. Many customers are refreshing older servers and seeing dramatic reductions in total cost of operations and space requirements. Evaluate your potential benefits with the Xeon estimator

 Investment Protection – All 45nm intel xeon processors (xeon 7400 and xeon 5400) are platform compatible with their 65nm quad-core predecessors (xeon 7300 and xeon 5300 respectively) so adoption, certification and integration into existing IT environments requires less effort.

 Flexible Virtualization: All 45nm Intel Xeon processors contain a technology called Intel VT FlexMigration that allows newer 45nm processors to be live migration compatible with previous 65nm intel xeon processors. So with current virtualization software support, IT customers can migrate virtual machines across multiple generations of intel processors, all in one big pool of computing.

 Better Business and Science: Many of the world’s top companies are using Intel’s 45nm products coupled with their software solutions to enhance their IT infrastructure. Last week Cern opened the Large Hadron Collider focused on recreating the big bang . Read more about how 45nm intel technology is playing an integral role in gaining insights into the formation of the universe or check out how your peers are benefiting from new technology at www.intel.com/references

 Eco-Friendly: If your company or boss has a green thumb, you may be interested in knowing that the new Xeon 5400 products are now built with materials which are both lead and halogen free (halogen is a material known to contribute to global warming)

Finally, I came across this video where Nathan Brookwood (analyst from Insight 64) discusses the new Xeon 7400 product (Dunnington) and his outlook on technology roadmaps moving forward.

In the next few weeks, I will be compiling and answering the top 6 questions around 45nm … so ask away.

Chris

Why 45nm ... What's Next (part 2)

C_Peters — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:40:20 GMT

Last week, the first part this video series focused on the energy efficiency benefits of 45nm. The 2nd part of this video (below) is focused on the benefits of 45nm for virtualization and the intel processor roadmap including what's next in 45nm processor technology - the Dunnington and Nehalem-EP products

Is this information useful to you? why or why not?

Chris

Quad-Core ROI Calculator

C_Peters — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:18:06 GMT

Using some data from our own IT group, we developed a simple ROI calculator. This tool provides an estimate of performance and IT cost savings of refreshing older servers with new ones. Below is a screen shot of the calculator that is now available on our new server tools section of the Server Room. Give it a try and let us know if these assessment tools are helpful?

Surviving the Data Center Crisis - Part 4 - Thinking outside the Box

K_Lloyd — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:56:49 GMT

Part four of three

Hopefully if you are watching this, you have already seen the first three installments I did on surviving data center crisis. A quick recap, the premise ( aka crisis ) is, You are running out of capacity.

According to Green Tech World, TMC 2007 "81% of IT mgrs will exceed capacity for power or space in the next 5 years".

In the first three video segments I spoke to three complementary approaches, that taken together could give you as much as 50X the data center capacity in your existing power and space .

Summarizing:

Data Center Crisis - How to Survive... Refresh with todays advanced high performing servers
Data Center Crisis - Part 2 - Using Virtualization... Virtualize and Consolidate
Data Center Crisis - Part 3 - Getting Dense- Use every Watt

Today I want to address two follow-up questions:

One, Where to go next when I used up all this new capacity?
Two, Who can help me get there?

The answers, it turns out, are related.

Moving outside the box is the 4^th^ strategy, and like the other strategies, it can be used anytime, in complement with the other three strategies.

Step to outside the boxness:

Moving outside the box allows it manager to move work that can be efficiently run elsewhere ( things like email ) outside the data center, and focus on the highest business value or least movable work inside.

As to who can help you get here. The system integrator/IT Outsourcer community offers support in all four strategies I have outlined.

My recommendation is to examine your situation, and your growth projection, and create a plan using all four strategies that will preclude the major capital expense of data center construction. Avoiding that 10 to 50 million dollar capital hit should be a very compelling proposal.

Data Center Crisis - Part 2 - Using Virtualization

K_Lloyd — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:19:55 GMT

In part one of this "series" ( ok, mini-series) I spoke about the benefits of Server refresh. It is pretty huge for most installed servers. In many cases an IT manager could see a 5x jump in compute capacity by replacing depreciated servers. If these are older single core processor based servers, the number is probably even greater. Hopefully a 5x increase in capacity can push out your data center construction needs.

My next recommendation revolves around virtualization, or more specifically consolidation through virtualization. You can skip the words now and jump to the video below.... but since you are still reading, here is an intro to the video. I have seen a lot different data on "enterprise server utilization" but most of it pegs the meter at 10-15% utilization for volume landscape servers. ( By the way, that is a low number, not something to be proud of) Now, if you follow my advice and replace all these less-efficient older servers with cutting edge high efficiency Intel quad core machines, on a one for one basis, you are going to see some pretty un-pleasant utilization. Think single digit. In a nutshell, it is time to virtualize and consolidate. If you both virtualize and carefully manage and balance your workloads, it is reasonable to expect another 5x capacity boost through improved utilization. AND 5x*5x=*25x* more capacity ( in the same space and power!) (Try out the Intel consolidation calculator) vid 2

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Data Center Crisis - How to Survive

K_Lloyd — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:12:31 GMT

InfoWorld recently published some pretty scary data on the data center crunch: exerpt: "Forty-two percent of the respondents said their datacenters would exceed power capacity within 12 to 24 months unless they carried out expansion. Another 23 percent said it would take 24 to 60 months to run out of power capacity. The managers reported similar figures for cooling: 39 percent said they would exceed cooling capacity in 12 to 24 months, and 21 percent said it would take 24 to 60 months. "

I have done a series of blog entries on the topic: Almost Free Data Center Capacity and Big Numbers in the Data Center - The Data Tsunami

In these I have focused the solution ( or at least treatment) for data center pain on three strategies - Refresh, Virtualize, and Densification. I don't think I have used the word densification in a sentence before, but spell-check says it is real... For those who prefer a mixed media message, I agreed to record a series of short videos talking about the each approach and benefits for these strategies. Starting with the video on refresh.

The next two - virtualization and densification, will be posted soon.

Thanks for tuning in.

Are clouds the answer? What is the question?

K_Lloyd — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:44:00 GMT

In a prior post I argued that a lot of the work happening in your data center could probably be done someplace else. One of the counter arguments to this approach is the potential loss of the competitive advantage achieved by owning your compute resource, especially where your competition can not or does not own a parallel resource. There may be some situations where this is true, but in most situations external resources (ex: Cloud Computing) can actually liberate a business from the capital constraints of building a private compute center. If compute capacity delivers a competitive advantage, external availability provides scale to the limits of what an organization use. Like any other resource, the trick is in using it effectively. Ability to take advantage of this resource will be a future differentiator for compute enabled companies. One of my favorite sound bites was an estimate in "information week" stating that a one-millisecond advantage in trading applications could be worth $100 million a year to a major brokerage firm.

Taking advantage of the computing cloud starts to look a lot like the fabled utility computing architecture. Utility computing is real, but Gartner* still places it on decent into the "trough of disillusionment". I agree, and broad availability of utility computing is still a few years out. That doesn't mean IT managers should be waiting.

Why does Intel care? Will processor type matter in this emerging utility era - in the era of hosting, SAAS, and clouds? My short answer is yes. I think Intel has the right products and roadmap to be "platform of choice" in the evolution to utility. My rationale for this position comes from the behaviors of companies doing leading work in these areas. It turns out that service providers want the very best value, where value is measured as a combination of performance, performance / watt, performance / $, platform efficiency, support for virtualization, management, and security. I.E. pretty much the same stuff that every data center manager should value. Intel has focused server platform evolution toward delivering platform leadership in, efficiency, virtualization and performance. Success in these three pillars ensures continued leadership in the data center. Beyond these pillars, Intel is also working with the software ecosystem to enable effective integration and optimization of the rest of the solution stack. The combination of technical leadership and a shared core architecture that spans mobile, desktop, and servers gives Intel a distinct advantage in utility computing.

Data Center Innovation: Is Virtualization the latest hype or a key step forward in Data Center transformation?

J_Smith — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:02:00 GMT

Data Center Innovation: Is Virtualization the latest hype or a key step forward in Data Center transformation?

Members of the technology development community, sometimes take the press at face value. In other cases, we accept the press, new media and old, for what they are, journalists. Journalists ultimately commissioned to sell eyeballs and provoke "cocktail chatter" over their brilliant prose. The question that it has always left upon me, as a member of this community of technology developers, do they really understand what we do? Do they understand or even care about the countless hours required to think of the next great technological innovation, determine the markets for its application, build an ecosystem to sustain, and continue to innovate in the face of dwindling profits and increasing competition. Clayton Christenson calls this the "Innovator's Dilemma"....though I am not sure he has ever felt the "sting" of the dilemma....better to write the story then live through it I suppose.

Virtualization has become the latest "grist" for the technology journalist "mill". VMWare, a 7-year "overnight" success story, led by the engineering team of Mendel Rosenblum, Steve Herrod and their "Captain" Diane Greene, has captured the industry's imagination and begun to transform Data Centers around the world. This team has innovated for years behind a simple premise to enable x86 servers to be logically replicated as much as and as many times as the compute cycles will allow. Many have argued they are replicating innovation that's been done on mainframes for years and to a certain extent,...they are right. Does that make the technology advances in hypervisor development and Data Center efficiency LESS innovative? No, in my opinion, innovation is different from pioneering. The current wave of Virtualization innovators, (VMWare, Virtual Iron, SWSoft, Novell, Oracle, Sun, Microsoft, 3Leaf Systems, Citrix, etc.) owe a strong legacy to pioneers of the Atlas Project in 1961 and IBM for innovating "time sharing" and resource pooling concepts over 40 years ago. However, their innovation have exceeded far beyond the basic concepts of "logical partitioning" of compute processes to include virtual machine motioning from a single physical server to another, resource scheduling and log file innovation for higher availability and the ability to be operating system "lite" for rapid application deployment. These innovations are reducing Data Center costs as much as 50-70% in some cases. What is compelling is that these new group of innovators are transforming the traditional client/server software development models for both IT enterprises and independent software vendors.

At Intel, we spend a great deal of our time developing silicon innovations in virtualization and we are once again pushing the "innovation paradigm" by extending virtualization innovation to chipset, networking and I/O technologies. Server Platform Virtualization (processor, chipset and I/O virtualization) has benefits for the industry, software developers and individual IT managers. For the industry, it facilitates a discussion between Intel and our competitors to drive the standards and best practices discussion to deliver virtualization capabilities with meaningful impact, such as the work we are doing with PCI-SIG around I/O virtualization. For software developers Server Platform Virtualization provides opportunities for innovation and new usage models for graphics virtualization, business continuity and storage management. The IT manager realizes all of these benefits by enjoying a reduced cost deployment infrastructure, ease of use in integrated management tools and increased efficiency on power requirements. Enough benefit, enough innovation to keep the "hype machine" alive and for good reason.

What does this mean? In my opinion, Virtualization is BOTH the latest hype machine for the industry and the 1^st^ meaningful step towards Data Center innovation in a decade. The combination of virtualization technology, multi-core energy efficient processors technologies and 10GB+ networking infrastructure will transform the way we view Data Centers, both physically and logically over the next 5 years. Beyond 2012, innovators will still face "our dilemma", journalists will find the next article to write/hype and the pioneers will (hopefully) be debating the initial findings of their 1^st^ personal quantum computer, and many of us will be determining how to incorporate yet another key innovation into our lives in the Data Center.

For a popular history of virtualization:

http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/virtualization/

For the less popular version and TCO calculator:

http://www.vmware.com/overview/history.html

For additional Intel resources:

http://www.intel.com/technology/platform-technology/virtualization/