The Intel Xeon D Review: Performance Per Watt Server SoC Champion?
by Johan De Gelas on June 23, 2015 8:35 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon-D
- Broadwell-DE
Scale-Out Big Data Benchmark: ElasticSearch
ElasticSearch is an open source, full text search engine that can be run on a cluster relatively easy. It's basically like an open source version of Google Search that can be deployed in an enterprise. It should be one of the poster children of scale-out software and is one of the representatives of the so called "Big Data" technologies. Thanks to Kirth Lammens, one of the talented researchers at my lab, we have developed a benchmark that searches through all the Wikipedia content (+/- 40GB). Elasticsearch is – like many Big Data technologies – built on Java (we use the 64-bit server version 1.7.0).
The term "Big data" almost immediately suggests that you need massive machines, more like the new Xeon E7 which supports up to 6 TB. In reality, many big data analyses are running on top of very humble machines in a cluster. ElasticSearch is such an an application: the underlying Java technology does not work well with a larger than 32 GB heap. A total of 64 GB RAM is considered as the sweet spot, to leave some RAM space for filesystem caching.
The result of the Xeon D is stunning. The Xeon D is no less than 70% faster than the fastest Xeon E3s. Better performance is possible with the Xeon E5, but the price tag of those servers is not comparable to the Xeon D servers. The Xeon D-1540 (and as a result the SYS-5028D-TN4T) is the performance per dollar champ here.
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Krysto - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Betteridge law.Metaluna - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
...fails in this case. Did you read the review?CajunArson - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
While desktop Broadwell isn't all that great, these server parts really show off Intel's accomplishments in improving power efficiency and performance-per-watt with 14nm.ARM has a huge hill to climb to really compete with these parts, and we've already seen AMD effectively skip its first iteration of an ARM product because they probably got wind of the Xeon D and decided they would have to do both a die-shrink and completely customized ARM core just to keep up.
The_Assimilator - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
I very much doubt whether we'll ever see another server CPU from AMD, regardless of ARM cores or not. If they even manage to get Zen out the door, *and* it's not another massive flop, I will be impressed.Refuge - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
I root for them everyday, but lets not give them too big of a hill to climb with a broken leg now. lolextide - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Take it easy man, AMD is not going down the drain any time soon, and we WILL see some future server oriented parts come from them. But how fast will they be? That's the question and we wont know for a while...Kjella - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Really? Last quarter they had a $187 million total comprehensive loss on $1030 million in revenue, even if you exclude the restructuring cost they lost $100 million for a -10% deficit. The stockholder's equity is almost gone with $17 million left, after that getting funding or a credit limit will become much harder.And Q2 is probably going to be another bloody quarter with no major CPU or GPU launches and firesales of old Win8 stock in preparation for Win10. The console ramp-up is usually in Q3 in preparation for Christmas, not before the summer. Last quarter's loss they took almost entirely from their cash reserves, they're now in the lower end of what they need to operate, if they lose this quarter too they must cut where it hurts bad.
Guspaz - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
When we needed a low-power and low-cost server solution, we went with a desktop i3, because for some reason Intel supports ECC RAM on the i3 and lower, but not in the i5 and higher.julianb - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Very interested in this SOC.If possible could we see how the Xeon D deal with Cinebench Multithreaded test?
I am into 3D CPU rendering and would like to know how does the Xeon D-1540 compare to say i7-3930K or i7-4790K.
I realize the purpose of Xeon D-1540's existence is different but still...
Thank you.
MrSpadge - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link
An eco-tuned 5820K seem better. I don't suppose you're going to render 24/7 all the time, so the electricity savings from the 14 nm Broadwell will have a hard time making up for the massive difference in initial cost.