Xeon processor

Intel set to release “Nehalem” Xeon processors

Intel may launch its next generation multi-core Xeon processors, code-named Nehalem, on Monday.

The company sent out invitations to a live webcast on March 30 “for the launch of a groundbreaking new server architecture.” If that doesn’t give it away, some server vendors have already announced products based on the Nehalem processors, including Cisco, which will use the Intel Xeon CPU’s in their upcoming Unified Computing System’s blade servers.  Rackable Systems already introduced CloudRack systems based on Nehalem, and Dell is expected to introduce Nehalem-based systems this week.

In earlier disclosures about Nehalem chips for x86 servers, Intel said the processor will have two, four or eight processing cores and provide better scalability than previous generations. It will also have scalable cache sizes and simultaneous multithreading, or Hyper-threading, which is already available on other Xeon processors.

While Intel prides itself on introducing multi-core processors at a faster pace than competitor AMD, some of the most significant enhancements to the new Xeon processor have existed in AMD chips for years.

For example, one of the major changes with Nehalem is integration of the memory controller into the CPU. This replaces the legacy Front Side Bus, which is a known culprit in traffic bottlenecks issues. AMD has been offering an integrated memory controller –called Direct Connect Architechture — in its Opteron CPUs for years now.

Another feature in Nehalem is the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI), which will give the chip faster access to a lot more bandwidth. This feature is similar to AMD’s HyperTransport technology, which has been around for a number of years as well.

That said, by adding QPI and an integrated memory controller, Nehalem will have access to a lot more bandwidth than its predecessors without relying on tons of cache memory, according to an ARS Technica report on Nehalem.

More importantly, what all of this means for end users is significantly better performance for applications that can take advantage of multithreading and multiple processing cores.

Intel, Oracle collaborate on cloud computing

At Oracle OpenWorld 2008 in San Francisco this week, Oracle Corp. and Intel Corp. announced that they are collaborating on ways to help companies move into cloud computing. The companies will also identify and drive standards for flexible deployment in both private and public clouds.

Customers are already running applications on shared infrastructure within their firewalls using Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT) and Oracle Grid Computing technologies. Some companies are also creating private clouds for their internal applications and to have the ability to extend them to public cloud environments, according to Oracle.

To advance the use of cloud computing, Oracle and Intel plan to cooperate in the following areas:

* Efficiency – Recent collaboration between Oracle and Intel on Oracle VM and the Xen open source hypervisor with Intel VT has yielded a 17 percent performance improvement of Oracle Database running virtualized on Intel Xeon processors. Oracle and Intel will continue their joint software optimization work to achieve performance and power efficiency gains.

* Security – Oracle and Intel will work together to strengthen the security of VMs in a shared cloud environment. Both companies will continue to integrate their data encryption technologies to guarantee data privacy and security in shared public cloud environments.

* Standards – Intel and Oracle will work with other industry leaders to extend standards that enable portability of virtual machine images, such as the Open Virtual Format (OVF), and to create Web services standards for provisioning and management of cloud-based services.

This week, Oracle also announced new licensing and support for a handful of Oracle applications in Amazon EC2 cloud computing environments.

Unisys updates server with six-core Intel Xeon, enhances services

Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp. announced its new ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server using Intel Xeon six-core processors (Dunnington), which Intel also announced today; along with new business assurance services and software in the Unisys Infrastructure Management Suite.

Unisys’ new ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server is based on the new six-core Intel Xeon processor 7400 series. It has 16 sockets providing up to 96 processor cores. According to Unisys, the 7600R is designed for database and online transaction processing environments, large-scale consolidation and virtualization initiatives and business intelligence deployments with Microsoft SQL Server.

Model 7600R can support consolidation of 64 SQL Server databases into a single four-socket, six-core Xeon processor configuration – with 24 total processor cores – which Unisys claims is better than a commodity server farm of 64 dual-socket, single-core Xeon processor servers with 128 total processor cores, while using less disk and providing better response times.

The new server also supports VMware ESX Server and Microsoft Hyper-V, and supports dynamic partitioning so users can add more processor, memory and I/O resources on the fly without disrupting system operations. Unisys plans to introduce secure partitioning in the first half of 2009, which provides partitioning capabilities at the processor core level.

Prices for the ES7000 Model 7600R range from $26,430 to $135,000. Unisys will exhibit the ES7000 Model 7600R at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas, Sept. 15-18.

Unisys business services
Unisys also announced new Business Assurance Services that help companies evaluate the cost and benefits of disaster recovery products, reduce the time it takes to deploy the best ones and reduce operational costs by improving resource utilization.

“We are vendor-agnostic and will implement whichever technology is best for the client. It could be a Unisys product, or it could be from another vendor,” said Jody Little, vice president of solutions and services at Unisys.

The Unisys Business Assurance Services, using discovery processes and tools developed with support from Unisys partner GlassHouse Technologies, include the following:

• Unisys Disaster Recovery Architecture Service, which provides a methodology to build application and data disaster recovery capabilities.
• Unisys Backup Modernization Service, which helps clients select new technologies and services to support backup environments at both core and remote sites.
• Unisys Data Protection for Backup Service, which helps clients improve backup and restore operations for business information, reducing costs by improving utilization of assets. Unisys experts also make vendor-independent recommendations and create a prioritized action plan

Unisys has also added new management software components to its Infrastructure Management Suite, which automates and orchestrates management of a real-time IT infrastructure. More information can be found on the Unisys website.

Intel launches 45nm halogen-free processors

Intel Corp. has launched its first four energy-efficient halogen-free 45nm Intel Xeon processors.

Lead and halogen materials have been used by the entire electronics industry for decades and there are concerns about the impact they’re having on the environment. Removing the materials makes the processors “eco-friendly.”

Much of the energy efficiency these new processors provide comes from Intel’s 45nm manufacturing capability and its new transistors that use a Hafnium-based high-k metal gate formula. In addition, all previously launched versions of the Intel Xeon 5200 and 5400 series will now be halogen-free.

The processors are drop-in compatible with existing Intel dual processor platforms that have been in the market since 2006. The Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5400 Series consists of the new X5492, X5470 and L5430 processors, the fastest of which clocks in at 3.4GHz. The low voltage version uses 50 watts of power (12.5 watts per core). The Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5270 runs as low as 80 watts with frequencies up to 3.5 GHz.

Systems vendors supporting these new processors including Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gigabyte, HP, IBM, Microstar, NEC, Quanta, Rackable Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems, Supermicro, Tyan and Verari Systems. The new 5400 series processors are available now, and the X5270 will be available this fall.

Pricing and Availability (1ku quantities)
Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor L5430 2.66GHz 1333MHz 50W $562
Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5470 3.33GHz 1333MHz 120W $1386
Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5492 3.4GHz 1600MHz 150W $1493
Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor X5270 3.5GHz 1333MHz 80W $1172

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com

AMD holds press conference to bash Intel before IDF

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) held a Web-based press conference Aug. 15 to formally attack Intel Corp. prior to the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in San Francisco next week.

When AMD invited me to listen to a webcast regarding the IDF forum, I expected to hear some news; maybe their 45nm processor Shanghai would be coming out earlier than expected to make up for Barcelona’s delay? That would be big and would help AMD make up some ground in the processor product release wars against Intel.

Instead, the conference served as a means for AMD to plant the seeds of skepticism in the minds of IDF attendees before the conference. AMD executives spent the hour call marketing their existing processing and graphics technologies and bashing Intel.

Randy Allen, the SVP and GM for AMD’s computing solutions group, cited benchmarks showing AMD’s Opteron processors in good light, like the SPECweb 2005 benchmark showing Opteron Model 2356 and Model 8356 hold the top x86 Web performance records for two-and four-processor servers.

Allen also touted AMD’s virtualization assist technology, AMD-V with Nested Page Tables, which recieved high praise from a VMware engineer recently, and he noted that quad-core Opteron is being used in a total of seven of the top performing systems in the most recent Top 500 Supercomputers list, including the No. 1 IBM’s RoadRunner.

“We have our swagger back,” Allen said.

He failed to note, however, that AMD’s Opteron chips were used in only 56 systems (11.2%) on the list, which is down from 78 systems six months ago. Intel processors were used in 74.8% of the world’s supercomputers (about 374 systems), up 4% from six months ago.

When a reporter raised this issue during the press conference, Allen said that having Opteron used in the top performing computer and systems high on the list is more notable than the slip in the number of total systems on the top 500.

In addition to hyping AMD products, Allen also spent plenty of time directly attacking Intel, saying the company has an easy time innovating because it simply mimics AMD’s work.

“Intel adopted our power efficiency technology, our multicore technology and you will see them copying the Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport technologies we developed five years ago. … Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also annoying.”

Surely, IDF conference goers will hear similar hype about Intel products from Intel executives next week and negative remarks about AMD.

The only mention of AMD’s processor on deck, 45-nanometer chip code-named Shanghai, was that it is scheduled for release later this year and will be delivered on time. Shanghai will consume 20% less power at idle than Barcelona and will have 6 MB of L3 cache (compared with Barcelona’s 2MB of L3 cache).

All in all, the press conference simply re-stated old AMD news.

Thanks for the re-cap, AMD. That is an hour of my life I’ll never get back. And if you just finished reading this blog, hopefully it’s only a few minutes of your time that you can never get back.

Next Generation Data Center/LinuxWorld 2008: Reporter’s Notebook

I expected this year’s joint LinuxWorld/Next Generation Data Center conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco Aug. 4-7 to be full of technology vendors, high-level technical sessions, product news and interesting characters.

As you can see (at right), my expectations were exceeded.

This year’s conference is packed, with three to four keynotes each day, a large array of tech vendors and numerous technical sessions, covering storage, security, networking, applications, facility infrastructure, and virtualization.

In the five sessions I attended today, which touched on all of the above, virtualization was a predominant topic of conversation in each.

For instance, Rajiv Ramaswami, the vice president and general manager of Cisco Systems Inc., (at left), gave a keynote this afternoon, “Data Center 3.0: How the Network Is Transforming the Data Center,” and explained that, eventually, everything in the data center will be virtualized, including networks.

In another session I attended on creating an efficient, profitable data center, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute, virtualization was listed again and again as a key way to reduce data center power consumption.

Cloud computing (aka distributed computing), which goes hand in hand with virtualization, was also a popular topic in the sessions I attended, including the kickoff keynote, “Stateless Computing: Scaling at Zero Marginal Cost above Capex,” by Jeffrey Birnbaum, the managing director and chief technology architect for Merrill Lynch.

In between sessions, I took a tour of Rackable Systems’ 40-foot containerized data center (at right), Ice Cube, which was one of the most popular attractions on the large show floor.

Ice Cube is packed with up to 22,400 Intel Xeon processing cores in Rackable’s own half-depth servers, has a 36-inch central isle to access servers and uses direct current, or DC, power and self-contained uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, technology.

Ice Cube can be configured with IBM BladeCenter servers as well.

Tomorrow I’ll check out a keynote session by Oracle CIO and Senior Vice President Mark Sunday on delivering business value with next-generation data centers and more sessions on green strategies for data centers, cloud computing and virtualization.

Facebook relying on Intel Xeon processors in Data Center build-out

The social networking website Facebook is building out its data center infrastructure using Intel Corp. processor-based systems and plans to deploy thousands of Intel Xeon processor-based servers over the next year to help accommodate its rapid growth, the two companies announced last week.

Intel will also collaborate with Facebook to determine the best configurations for its server and software using Intel processors, taking into account energy efficiency and performance.

Over the past several months, Facebook tested and benchmarked a number of server platforms and scenario, and ultimately selected the Intel Xeon 5400 series quad-core processors for its round of new deployments that begin in July.

When Facebook was contacted for more information on the systems and processors it has tested, why it chose Intel over AMD and other questions about data center infrastructure plans, it refused comment.

That said, Intel’s press statement had the following quote from Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook; “Intel has demonstrated that the performance of their systems can help Facebook scale our infrastructure and continue to deliver the best experience to users around the world.”

“When you are responsible for providing a fast, high-quality experience to more than 90 million people worldwide, every ounce of efficiency matters,” Heiliger said in the statement.

Also, since Facebook’s applications are mostly built on open source technologies, the companies stated that some of the insights from this collaboration may be contributed back to the open source community, benefiting other companies that use open source technologies.