Many-Cores Change The Game
In both PC and server platforms, the performance gains were significant -- and positioned the CPU makers well when they both reached the quad-core milestones during the last major IT refresh cycle. Quad-core processors with new power and performance management capabilities meant the adoption of virtualization could also grow in a meaningful way -- and it did.
Now both AMD and Intel are on to bigger and better things, having designed and shepherded to market true, multicore parts. AMD is now mainstream with six-core processors in the form of the Athlon II series, and Intel has hit the eight-core mark with its latest family of Xeons. The result: platforms that drive the price-performance curve to new heights and position the channel well to transform on-premise data centers over the course of the next several years.
And, like the last refresh cycle, the performance of these multicore CPU platforms means incredible new potential for virtualization and, with it, greater value than ever before.
Consider: It’s now possible to deliver all the performance, with greater manageability and less overhead, in a single 1U server today than it was with a full rack of servers just five years ago. And for many customers of VARs, that provides a compelling new conversation to drive a major refresh in the enterprise.
In this roundup, we look at the latest multicore products from each major CPU company. When all is said and done, we are convinced the true potential for IT will be meaningful and a major game-changer in the months and quarters ahead.
AMD’s Athlon II X4 640
Advanced Micro Devices, in May, unveiled a faster set of Athlon II processors, stepping up the clock speeds of its server parts while leaving steady their prices and power consumption.
At the top of the line is the X4 640, a 3.0-GHz, 95-watt quad-core CPU, which is expected to sell for around $122. The CRN Test Center received the X4 640 chip and found its performance to be on par with the speed bump, though still slightly behind its Intel quad-core counterpart in Geekbench performance tests.
We compared the 640’s Geekbench performance with that of an Intel Xeon X3460 at 2.8GHz, which powered an HP Z200 Workstation we tested recently.
Both systems were running 64-bit Windows 7 with 4 GB of DDR3 memory. The AMD-equipped system turned in a top Geekbench score of 6,225 while consuming an average of 154 watts and peaking at 186 watts during benchmark execution. The Z200 with its $350 Xeon delivered a Geekbench of 7,640 while peaking at 123 watts. Like the 640, the Xeon Intel is rated at 95 watts TDP (thermal design power). Spot temperatures on the processor and motherboard never exceeded 86 degrees.
The 45nm X4 640 contains 64K of L1 instruction cache per core and another 64K for data. L2 cache is 512K per core, 2 MB total. It’s equipped with a 128-bit memory controller that can handle DDR2 and DDR3 memory at frequencies up to 2.0GHz. AMD’s Hyper-Transport 3.0 spec is on board, jockeying interprocessor communications at 4.0GHz (2.0GHz in each direction) via one 16x16-bit link.
Intel’s Xeon X7560
Eight cores make a difference.
When the CRN Test Center recently received a Dell Power- Edge R810 server, we immediately zeroed in on the CPU: Intel’s latest Nehalem-EX processor, also known as the Xeon 7560. The processor has eight cores; two of them were built inside the Dell chassis.
The system was populated with 128 GB of DDR3 memory (32 GB was addressable by Windows), and the server was preloaded with 64-bit Windows Server 2008.
Using Primate Labs’ 64-bit Geekbench 2.1.4 benchmarking software, the server blew the roof off all previous performance records in the CRN Test Center lab, turning in a score of 14,890. With results like those, the Intel platform enables significant performance as a stand-alone server or—to maximize everything -- as a virtual data center in a box.
With both processors, total consumption for the box running a standard workload was 345 watts for the server.
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