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?

Posted by Eoin McConnell Oct 2nd, 2008
Back in May I shared some thoughts about how I would choose between different Servers based on RISC architecture and Intel based architecture. My decision making was based on three basic tenets in terms of choosing the right CPU architecture
1) Choice and the ability to pick between multiple suppliers.
2) Performance
3) System Cost and Total cost of Ownership

As you probably know by now, we launched the Xeon Processor 7400 Series (codename; Dunnington) on September 15th. The performance results delivered by systems based on the Xeon 7400 processor are astounding when you actually compare with performance delivered by systems based on RISC architecture. Who would have thought that you could get this level of performance from Xeon at a fraction of the cost of comparable RISC based architectures.
The Xeon 7400 is designed for high-end enterprise workloads like your typical database so I decided to look at the latest database results. If you get a chance, then check these out for yourself at tpc.org. Amazing performance, a fraction of the cost and you can choose from multiple Vendors and Operation System combinations.
- HP Proliant DL 580 4s system delivered 634,825 tpmC at $1.10/tpmc. This compares with an equivalent POWER 6 based system at 629,159 tpmC at $2.49/tpmC

I also decided to look at how many users a Xeon 7400 based system could support in an SAP environment. For this comparison I took a slightly different approach to look at a 4s Xeon 7400 based system as compared to a 2S UltraSPARCT2 system. You may ask why I made this strange comparison, well to me a 2S UltraSPARCT2 system is a 4S system in disguise in terms of system capability, memory supported and most of all the price!

• HP Proliant DL 580 4s system supported 5,155 users. This compares with an equivalent UltraSPARcT2 based system at 4,170.

Six More Benefits of 45nm
HP Announces World Record 4-Socket TPC-C Result
IBM Announces World Record 8-Socket TPC-C Result

Previous Blog links:
So what does RISC really mean to you?

If there is one thing that has stayed consistent in the computing industry over time, it's that performance doesn't stand still. As our computing platform processing, I/O, and memory speeds continue to accelerate, it is important to remember a little thing called latency.

Often in the Ethernet world throughput is the 1^st^ and last performance metric of choice. 1 Gigabit and 10 Gigabit are the numbers that inspire thoughts of increased performance, and improved computing power. However, it's important to note that, in many applications, the transaction latency over the wire is really the key to unlocking high performance at the system level. One of the primary reasons that some organizations have turned to Infiniband and other I/O technologies for HPC and clustering in the past has to do with their desire to achieve very low latencies, not necessarily increased throughput. If you look at a historical standard Gigabit Ethernet connection, you may see latencies that are around 125μs. This may have been ok in the past, but as improvements at the application level as well in the system hardware and CPU take hold, legacy Ethernet won't be good enough for HPC and clustering environments.

The interesting, and often overlooked fact with Ethernet is that the latency characteristics are improving as the industry moves from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabit. The faster throughput on the wire comes along with lower latency to some extent, but in addition, there have been several improvements in interrupt handling that drastically improve overall latencies when comparing legacy 1Gigabit to 10Gigabit. With a basic 1^st^ generation Intel® 10Gigabit CX4 card you can now see latencies approach 25μs without any special tuning.

What's even better is that Intel's 10 Gigabit networking silicon also has further enhancements for improving latency by introducing some new specialized Low Latency Interrupt (LLI) filters in the silicon. These filters provide the hardware with a quicker reaction time to network packets that meet certain customizable criteria. The filters can be tuned to have a rapid response to certain packet and traffic types. With these kinds of LLI filters in place, latencies can be reduced further by another ~50% to ~14μs.

Going forward with 10 Gigabit there are new technologies and designs that can help push latency even lower to the sub-10μs threshold to keep Ethernet very competitive as a fabric not only from a cost and throughput perspective, but also from the perspective of latency.

And while lower latency is certainly important, the last piece that was really missing from the Ethernet performance puzzle was not just low latency, but deterministically low latency. The key is that the worst case packet latencies for many applications are relevant and very important. By application thread affinitization, the individual data thread can be piped directly between a network queue and a CPU core. By more evenly distributing the networking workload between CPU cores in a predictable fashion, you get a deterministic kind of latency that does not stray far from the average assuming CPU cores do not get oversubscribed. Average latency of ~14μs is good, but the fact that you can get this with reasonable determinism is a key for many applications and usages.

Now, lower, deterministic latency is not just a theoretical benefit for certain niche applications. Decreasing latency and improving overall latency characteristics while increasing throughput directly benefits the transaction rates that can be achieved with real world applications. As an example of the improved performance is the latest Reuter Market Data Systems (RMDS) benchmarks done by STACResearch on the 4-way Intel® Xeon E7450 (Dunnington) using the Intel® 82598EB 10 Gigabit AT Dual Port networking adapter. The testing showed the Highest Point-to-Point Server throughput to date on a single server in testing done by STAC. And total updates per second reached over 15 million. Financial Service industry administrators: I can see you drooling...

Latency and throughput numbers are great to talk about, but at the end of the day, real world application performance on real systems is the key. While there will always be a small subset of the high end server market that needs the absolute lowest latencies provided by Infiniband; 10 Gigabit Ethernet is gaining ground while maintaining its place as the default fabric of choice for multiple applications and traffic types. I believe the best is yet to come as newer, faster, and more responsive technologies continue to roll out.

Ben Hacker

What a fascinating couple of weeks for Intel. The week of Sept 8, my colleagues at Intel and I spent the week in Las Vegas at the SAP TechEd Conference. This show has over 6000 attendees including IT decision makers, developer and partners. I found this audience to be very technical and eager to understand the value of Intel architecture in relation to their SAP deployments. The Intel team stepped up and delivered in many ways to educate this audience that Intel architecture is not only the best solution for mission critical datacenter infrastructure, but that we provide clear TCO benefits to the customer.

We were fortunate to be able to feature the New Intel® Xeon® 7400 processor series via our partners IBM and Vmware. IBM announced a world record 2-tier SD benchmark on the IBM xseries 3950. The result of 9,200 SAP SD Benchmark users was achieved on the IBM System x™ 3950 M2, configured with eight Intel® Xeon® X7460 processors. Absolutely amazing.

One of the best learning experiences from the conference was speaking directly to IT decision makers in fortune 500 companies regarding the value of the Intel® Xeon 7400 series processor in SAP deployments. We were able to alleviate their concerns of HW costs associated w/ migration to ERP 6.0, business value of upgrading hardware and overall show clear TCO benefits of the core micro architecture from Intel. We backed it up with proven examples of TCO savings from multiple companies and even showed how Intel IT itself successfully migrated to ERP 6.0 and minimized business disruption significantly.

I've also had the opportunity to chat with James G. White with HP. Check out the video below to see what HP has to say about Modernizing the SAP Landscape....

Great stuff, great show. Loved it.

"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...

Day 1: I'm live from VMWorld this week experiencing the virtualization event of the year. I'll be updating this blog with happenings from the Intel booth and around the show floor. Some really cool video interviews with Intel Partners who are making a big impact in the virtualization world and giving IT managers real advantages over previous generation solutions. Here's a video showing the XEON 7400 near perfect scalability from 8 to 24 to 48 cores. Wow, 48 cores, that's cool!

If you liked the first video, check out this one where Jon Markee is talking about Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) and how flex priority improves performance and reduces boot time in your virtualized environment.

Day 2: Here's another video from the Intel Booth showing more examples of Intel Virtualization technology.

I'm getting ready once again to hit the road and this time I'm heading out to SAP TechEd conference next week (Las Vegas, Sept 9th-12th). I want to give a shout out to my colleague at SAP, Craig Cmehil who posted his blog HERE. As Craig mentions, a great place to network at the event is the Community Clubhouse which is in its 5th year. I also plan to spend some time in the Networking Lounge trying to catch the vibe of the event.

I'll be making daily updates to this blog as the event happens including cool Dunnington videos, interviews, and demos from the Community Clubhouse. If you can't make it out to the event, check back for updates here and you may want to browse the blogs on the SAP Community Network.

Wm. Hank Lea
Server Room Community Manager

LIVE UPDATE: 12:25pm

Here's a shot from the Intel Booth:



Check back later today for a cool video showing a Formula 1 racer simulation....

LIVE UPDATE: 4:30pm

Here's that F1 video I was promising earlier, and no, its not me driving. I was much slower than this guy....


More cool stuff coming your way tomorrow, check back to find out.

IDF SF08-Online gaming and sports leagues are growing every day and here at IDF this week we had the opportunity to see how Intel is making an impact. I was visiting the Virtualization Community in the IDF Showcase where I met Bjoern Metzdorf, Director of Information Technology at Turtle Entertainment who was speaking with Alan Bumgarner of Intel. Check out the video for a major success story including an 18:1 server consolidation ratio, 85-90% power savings and no observable latency for the gamer, this is cool stuff!

If you want to learn more about Turtle Entertainment and the Electronic Sports League (ESL) Click Me