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Intel Xeon 5500 Will Boost Cloud Computing|
- By Sonal Desai, Mar 31, 2009 1759 hrs IST
- Tags : Intel Corporation, enterprise-class processors, Xeon processor 5500 series, virtualization, codenamed Nehalem-EP, cloud computing, HPC, embedded systems
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Intel Corporation today introduced 17 enterprise-class processors, led by its Xeon processor 5500 series, which are also aimed at aiding virtualization. The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, previously codenamed "Nehalem-EP," offers several breakthrough technologies and will drive new growth markets such as cloud computing, HPC and embedded systems
The new release is Intel's response to the Opteron series of processors released by arch rival AMD in 2003. And AMD is quick to point out similarities in the two technologies.
The new processor architecture (Nehalem) is quite different from any of its predecessors. However, what's amazing is that many of the 'groundbreaking, innovative technologies' are quite similar to technologies AMD pioneered years ago, 2003 to be precise, said Vamsi Krishna, sr. technical manager, AMD India, in a press statement.
But Intel claims that the new enterprise-class chips are the most revolutionary' since its launch of the Intel Platinum Pro processors 15 years ago. They can automatically adjust to specified energy usage levels, speed data center transactions and customer database queries. They also will play a key role in scientific discoveries by researchers who use supercomputers as their foundation for research, said R. Ravichandran, director-sales, Intel, South Asia.
Nehalem, 45nm micro architecture, is an evolutionary design to exploit mobile-oriented core 2 products taking advantage of the Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) design. Because of the bandwidth and parallelism offered by 45nm architecture, Nehalem is less of a processor, but more a set of building blocks that can be used to design products for different market segments, said T.R. Madan Mohan, managing partner at Browne and Mohan.
Memory controller integration into the silicon die is one of the many features included in the new Intel architecture and this is believed to boost the whole system performance significantly, said Krishna. "However, this is a standard feature on all of AMD's server products since 2003. Nehalem is also supported by a high-speed internal bus known as Quick Path Interconnect. It will replace current FSB (Front Side Bus) in most of the current design. Again, the concept is quite similar to existing HyperTransport technology available in AMD products and is known as Direct Connect Architecture (DCA)."
Mohan agreed, but said that on performance side, Intel's Nehalem test results show it is better than AMD Opteron.
He said Nehlam allows the flexibility to change, number of cores, number of channels, memory type to be supported, power management features, etc. Because of SSE 4.2 strings, XML processing is faster, and thus Web applications can be run more efficiently by using Nehalem. The new processors are a departure from Intel's processor and front-end bus architecture, which had its limitations including virtualization to more a platform approach of System on Chip (SoC) architecture.
Intel has incorporated its Hyper Threading technology, which enables a processor to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. The technology can ramp up individual cores when needed while shutting down others to reduce power consumption.
Beyond the processor, Intel introduced the Nehalem EP platform, which includes the chipset that contains the new 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. The new technology is geared specifically at virtualization environments by improving network input/output performance, the company said in a statement.
A Xeon 5500-based server provides nine times the performance of a single-socket server running the previous-generation Xeon processor. The power boost means as many as 21 software servers can be consolidated from older systems into a single Nehalem EP-based server, reducing power consumption and space in a data center. In such a scenario, Intel claims Xeon 5500 computers can pay for themselves in eight months.
According to Mohan, Nehalem CRC accelerates network and storage applications and thus would be an ideal choice for blade servers. Also from an application perspective Nehalem would be very effective in pattern recognition applications hence may find more adoption in video/graphic intensive media industry.
Amongst the key verticals, defense would be the first vertical followed by media, government (especially meteorology & space applications), drug discovery & CRO will be the early adopters for its pattern matching capabilities, he said.
On what the new release spells for the IBM-Sun acquisition rumours, he said, "With more than 50% of server space likely to be with one player, IBM would strike competitive price bargains with Intel and market gain may not lead to too much revenue for Intel."
Meanwhile, Intel is planning to make the Nehalem EP platform more appealing and has plans to weave its upcoming 32-nanometer processors based on the micro architecture with the same motherboard sockets. Code-named Westmere, the 32-nm chips are set to ship next year.
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