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

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

Hank Lea and myself (Jason Davidson) will be covering the Eco-Technology debates at the Marriot Hotel in San Francisco on Monday, August 18th. We will also be hosting a blog talk radio show around this event at 5:15 PM.

In my tenure at Intel, I have had the pleasure of walking into major companies, educational institutes, non-profits, and government agencies to talk technology with many great people. “How green is this solution” is a topic on many minds lately – no matter which topic of discussion. Being an engineer by trade and scientist by education, I will typically dive into the details of around each component’s power consumption and the discussion ends with some simple math multiplying a number of units by their thermal numbers. However, there is so much more to the overall impact, and as I walk in and out of these locations, I am always amazed at the number of larger issues with much larger impacts that are unresolved or overlooked. For more information on these items, here is a blog.

The Eco-Technology Great Debates provide a unique and entertaining forum to expand your understanding of today’s most pressing data center and IT issues. Come hear industry leaders take up both sides of some of the hot topics facing
the industry.

Attendees will learn about the pros and cons of high-density computing versus low-density computing and ready-to-use container data centers versus traditional brick and mortar data centers. There will also be a panel discussion on energy efficiency metrics, which will take a look at everything from chips to cooling systems and how they play a role in energy efficiency.

The energy consumption of servers and data centers has doubled in the past five years and is expected to almost double again in the next five, costing about USD 7.4 billion annually.¹ There is no single right answer on what to do about this critical situation. Take an active step in solving this challenge by attending The Eco-Technology Great Debates and IDF at a special money-saving price. Register for IDF now and enter promo code CLOECOT (admission to the Eco-Technology Great Debate and a 2-day pass to IDF) or enter promo code *CLTECOT*(admission to the Eco-Technology Great Debate and a full conference pass to IDF). The debate takes place at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel (located across the street from IDF).

¹ [EPA Reports Significant Energy Efficiency Opportunities for U.S.
Servers and Data Centers (August 2007).|http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0de87f2b4bcbe56e852572a000651fde/4be8c9799fbceb028525732c0053e1d5!OpenDocument]

After coming back from IDF a couple weeks ago, I've had some time to go through the mountains of online material, presentations mostly and a few interesting videos. This video is from Pat Gelsinger's keynote address and features Mendel Rosenblum from VMware. Pat and Mendel discuss new technologies in virtualization and demonstrate "Flex Migration", just hit the play button below to view...


This is very interesting for those IT shops with multiple legacy platforms and new generation servers coming online. We will have more discussion on this topic in the future, and so in the meantime, let us know if you have questions on how this could benefit your datacenter.

Many utility companies in North America are encouraging energy efficiency in datacenters in a big way. Some are offering incentives to non-residential customers for making energy efficient choices including servers, storage, and other datacenter equipments. Most of these utility companies require customers to make thier rebate/incentive application prior to starting the project and obtain thier approval. I compiled a short informative article regarding various rebates/incentives offered by the utility companies and it was recently published in the datacenterjournal. Read through......

http://datacenterjournal.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1475&Itemid=41

RK Hiremane

As this is the first time posting here, here is a quick intro, I started out as a hardware designer for a UK computer company - back in the days when the PC was still a grey tin box with a 4.77MHz 8088 inside. I have been with Intel now for more years than I care to think about, with much of this time working with the OEMs and end-customers focused in the server market across EMEA.

As I trawl thru the press and listen to the industry analysts one topic that everyone is discussing is 'data centre efficiency' ( even elsewhere on this forum Intel IT Data Center Efficiency Initiative - Going Green, Data Center Efficiency ) but what's not real clear is what defines an efficient data centre - is it the efficiency of the servers, the cooling subsystems, the workload that can be handled in a given time or the operational processes that are in place to run the data centre ? And once you have decided what is considered 'efficient' how do you measure or quantify this efficiency.

Currently there are several approaches being considered by the industry to measure data centre efficiency, and I thought it would be worth spending some time looking at three elements that can affect DC efficiency - power, utilisation and process. Given the complexity of the topic I plan to take this in bite sized chunks ( rather than write a mass of text and lose the thread ). So, in this blog I will cover power and will come back to the topic in a subsequent posting to look to the other elements. If you think there are elements to DC efficiency that I am missing please feel free to chip in and provide your insights.

Power Efficiency - Measuring the ratio between the facilities load - cooling, power conversion etc vs. the IT load - compute/storage/infrastructure. Typically this approach focus's on the ratio of electrical power consumption of the various elements within the data centre. With the current focus on the 'environmental & green' aspects of data centres this seems to be the area where most of the attention on Data centre efficiency is focused.

If you look at the average Data Centre today its not just the compute infrastructure that consumes the Watts, power gets consumed by the cooling systems and air conditioners, voltage conversion & battery storage, lighting etc. All this contributes to the 'facilities load' - for many IT managers this does not hit their IT budget and they may not even see the power bill from the utility company so have no idea how much power is consumed by these key elements of their data centre. Current estimates indicate that upwards of 50% of the power that comes into the average data centre gets 'lost ' in the facilities load, more details here & here

There are several groups looking to quantify energy efficiency The Green Grid is working on metric called PUE ( Power Usage Effectiveness ) to measure the ratio of power consumed by the facilities load vs. the power available to the IT equipment in the data center - details in their white papers here. Also the Uptime Institute are doing something similar and various government institutions are getting interested as well and there's an extensive US govt white paper ( if you have a few hours spare to ingest its 150 pages) . In addition the European Union is working on a Data Centre Code of Conduct

The server OEMs are also working on a benchmark for measuring perf/watt ( http://www.spec.org/specpower/ ), these are great for measuring how good a server is on a test workload and how many transactions it can deliver for a given power input. With the increased focus on energy efficient performance this metric will become more and more important to the specifiers and purchasers of servers. With Intel's latest generation 45nm quad core Xeon processors we continue to drive up the performance a processor can achieve for a given Watt input, the challenge for the rest of the industry now is to lower the overall power consumption of the other elements within the server and to increase the throughput of the storage and I/O subsystems to complement the increase processor performance. But at the end of the day does a good perf/watt for a server indicate that a data centre is efficient ?

What's missing from this approach is that there is often no consideration made as to the utilisation of the servers within the data centre consequently it might be possible to achieve 'good' power efficiency numbers but have low server utilisation and hence not extracting the most workload out of the data centre. Here in EMEA we have initiated a Data Centre Efficiency Award to try and start to get a handle how best to identify DCs that are running best practices and delivering of power and utilisation efficiency.

I guess the question at the end of the day is do you consider that your Data Centre is efficient and how are you quantifying this efficiency ?