Dueling Cores: Intel's Fires Back With Its Bensley Platform

Can Intel Regain Its Mojo In Servers With Its New Dual-Core Offering?

CRN logo By Kristen Kenedy, ChannelWeb

3:00 PM EST Fri. Mar. 10, 2006
From the March 13, 2006 issue of CRN
Page 1 of 2

• Mini Boom
While AOpen viewed its slick-looking miniPC as a consumer product, system builders had other ideas, snapping up inventory for a variety of commercial niches.

• Dueling Cores
Intel prepares to fire back at AMD with its dual-core server platform in what is shaping up to be a bloody battle for market share.

• AMD On The Channel
AMD's Henri Richard talks with CRN Editor Heather Clancy about the company's priorities and channel plans.

• Prime Time For SAS
SAS drives are ready to go, but now system builders have to prime the market.

• Disties Push Solutions
Distributors say system builders need to become solution builders, and they want to help.

• Market Report
Custom systems are under pressure, but easing component shortages could help, CRN polling indicates.
Intel, wounded by the increasing strength of Advanced Micro Devices’ Opteron processor, is getting ready to fire back in what is shaping up to be a bloody duel over market share this year. In one of its first parries in 2006, the world’s largest chip maker plans to ship this month its first batch of lower-power dual-core processors to large system builders on a new platform that is aimed at improving overall server performance and manageability.

Those processors, code-named Dempsey, will run on a platform for single- and dual-socket servers, code-named Bensley. Servers based on the new platform are expected to ship within 60 to 90 days.

The combination of the Dempsey and Bensley is believed by many system builders to be Intel’s first chance to even up performance-per-watt with the Opteron in a volume server category that is favored by most small and midsize businesses.

Those system builders said success of the Bensley platform is crucial if Intel is to hang onto its current server market share. Intel, after all, is staking its future on dual-core processors and hopes to move the bulk of the market off single-core processors by the end of the year.

“Intel has a lot at stake with this platform and they really need to deliver on it,” said Erik Logan, chief technology officer of Pogo Linux, a Seattle-based custom-system builder and systems integrator specializing in Linux servers.
On the strength of the Opteron, AMD more than doubled its x86 server market share in 2005, according to figures from Mercury Research. AMD’s server market share rose to 16.4 percent in the fourth quarter, up from 7.4 percent share in the first quarter. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company had a particularly strong fourth quarter, during which it increased its share 3.7 percent from the third quarter.

After AMD released its first dual-core Opteron last April, Intel pushed up the release of its Xeon dual-core processors to the fourth quarter. However, those processors were available for Intel’s existing “Lindenhurst” platform and were built around an architecture that many system builders considered to be inferior to the AMD option.

In particular, AMD’s chips contain a memory controller that is integrated directly into the CPU, resulting in faster performance and power advantages. Intel’s current CPU architecture keeps the memory controller off die and is connected to the dual-core processor by a single bus. That bogs down communication between the components and requires more power, because the memory controller tends to be “something of a power consumer,” said Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research.

At press time, AMD’s plans for midyear were to increase the clock frequencies of its dual-core processors as well as add hardware-assist virtualization and move to DDR2 memory from DDR1, according to an AMD spokeswoman.

FIRING THE FIRST SHOT
Intel is promising that the new Dempsey chips combined with the Bensley platform will improve processing speed and power consumption over its previous dual-core options through some specific architectural changes.

To improve processing speed, Intel built in a dedicated bus from each core to the chipset, rather than requiring both cores to share a bus, as Intel’s current dual-core architecture does. The platform supports frontside bus speeds of 1033MHz, up from the current maximum of 800MHz.

Moreover, Intel does not skimp on the core cache in the Dempsey chips to help speed up processing times by buffering between the chip and the memory controller. Intel’s first Dempsey chips are expected to have 4 Mbytes of on-board cache, or 2 Mbytes per core. AMD currently offers 2 Mbytes of cache in its dual-core Opteron systems.

Together, these architectural improvements should help increase processing speeds, though many in the industry believe AMD will still maintain a technology advantage with its integrated memory controller.

Reducing power consumption is trickier. Intel’s new Dempsey chips—the first server chips manufactured using Intel’s 65-nanometer technology—are expected to run at 95 watts to 120 watts, depending on the model, according to Boyd Davis, general manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group Marketing. The highest clock speed available will be 3.73GHz. Davis said Intel will have several models, some offering higher performance with a higher thermal envelope and others focusing on power savings with somewhat lower clock speeds.

The more significant reduction in power consumption and increase in capabilities will come in the second half, when Intel releases its first dual-core server chip based on its mobile power-saving technology. That chip, code-named Woodcrest, will run at 80 watts or lower and also will work on the Dempsey platform, Davis said. And, they will be affordable. “The Woodcrest price stack will be the same price stack we are using today,” he said.

Intel’s current dual-core processors run at 135 watts to 150 watts, Davis said. The company also offers a new specialized chip, code-named Sossaman, that runs at about 31 watts. By comparison, AMD’s dual-core processor runs at 55 watts to 95 watts, depending on the model.
 
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