The Top of the Line Xeon D: 16 Cores At 2.3 GHz

The Xeon D-1557 is a Xeon D with 12 cores running at 1.8 GHz most of the time (1.5 GHz base clock) that can boost to 2.1 GHz in single threaded circumstances. The reason for the modest clockspeed is simply the relatively low 45W TDP.

So if you need more CPU compute power, Intel has recently launched the Xeon D-1581, which contains 16 cores (32 threads) which can run at 2.3 GHz most of the time (1.8 GHz base), and boosts to 2.4 GHz. It does not seem to be available to everybody quite yet, but it is simply the slightly more powerful version of the earlier 1587, which runs one speed grade slower (1.7-2.3 GHz). Intel has not disclosed pricing yet, but it is not too hard to figure out. The Xeon D-1587 costs a daunting $1754, so it is very likely that the slightly faster Xeon D-1581 is around $1850.

To make the Xeon D-1581 equipped Supermicro X10SDV-7TP8F attractive, Supermicro turned it into a very luxurious board. They added the LSI 2116 RoC chip which adds up to 16 SATA3/SAS2 ports, and an Intel i350-AM4 (4 extra gigabit ports) and an Intel I210 (2 extra gigabit ports). So in total you can attach 4x SATA disks, 16x SAS disks, 6x GigE and 2x 10 GbE connections. Although we are impressed with the I/O capabilities, we feel that the Ethernet configuration is a bit too much of a good thing. If you configured something wrong, the fact that 3 different NIC chips are present makes debugging it harder. Nevertheless, it is an interesting alternative for a large part of the server market that does not need a 2 socket Xeon E5 but still needs a lot of local I/O.

Supermicro and the Xeon D ThunderX SKUs: What is Cavium Offering Today?
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  • silverblue - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link

    I'm not sure how this is relevant. Johan doesn't review graphics cards, other people at Anandtech do. I bet Guru3D has a much bigger team for that, and I imagine that they have a much narrower scope (i.e. no server stuff).

    I don't think I've looked at a review recently that hasn't had the comments section polluted with "where is the review for x".
  • UrQuan3 - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link

    Intel allows their Xeons to sometimes pull double their TDP? No wonder our new machines trip breakers long before I thought they would. I need to test instead of assuming accurate documentation.

    I can see why you chose C-Ray, I'm just sorry a more general ray tracer was not chosen. Still, not it's intended market, though I am suddenly very interested. Ray-tracing and video encoding are my top two tasks.
  • Meteor2 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link

    The 'T' in 'TDP' is for thermal. It's a measure of the maximum waste heat which needs to be removed over a certain period of time.
  • UrQuan3 - Wednesday, June 22, 2016 - link

    Yes, it stands for thermal, but power doesn't consumed doesn't just disappear. Convert it to light, convert it to motion, convert it to heat, etc. In this case there is a small amount of motion (electrons) and the rest has to be heat. I expect much higher instantaneous pulls, but this was sustained power. Anyway, I will track down the AVX documentation mentioned below.

    I saw the h264ref. I'll be curious about x264 (handbrake) as the authors seem interested in ARM in the last few years. Unsurprisingly, it is far less optimized than x64. I benchmarked handbrake on the Pi2, Pandaboard, and CI-20 last year, just to see what it would do.
  • JohanAnandtech - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link

    C-Ray was just a place holder to measure FPU energy consumption. I look into bringing a more potent raytracer into our benchmark suite (povray)

    Video encoding was in the review though, somewhat (h264ref).
  • patrickjp93 - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link

    ARM chips with vector extensions allow it as well. Intel provides separate documentation for AVX-workload TDPs.
  • Antony Newman - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link

    Fascinating article.

    Why would Cavium not try and use 54 x A73s in their next chip?

    If ARM are not in the business of making Silicon, and ARM think the '1.2W Ares' will help them break into the Server market ... Then Why do we think ARM isn't working with the likes of Cavium to get a Server SoC that rocks the Intel boat?

    Typos From memory : send -> sent. Through-> thought. There were a few others.

    AJ
  • name99 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link

    How do you know ARM aren't working with such a vendor?
    ARM has always said that they expect ARM server CPUs to only be marginally competitive (for very limited situations) in 2017, and to only be really competitive in 2020.

    That suggests, among other things, that if they are working with partners, they have a target launch between those two dates, and they regard all launches before 2017 as essentially nice for PR and fr building up the ecosystem, but essentially irrelevant for commercial purposes.
  • rahvin - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link

    The problem as pointed out early in this article is that ARM keeps targeting Intel's current products, not the ones that will be out when they get their products out. We've had almost a dozen vendors get to the point of releasing the chip and drop it because it is simply not competitive with Intel. Most of these arm products were under taken when Intel was targeting performance without regard to performance/watt. Now that intel targets the later metric arm server chips haven't been competitive with them.

    Fact is Intel could decimate and totally take over all the markets arm chips occupy, but to do it they'd have to cannibalize their existing high profit sales. This is why they keep canceling Atom chips, the chips turned out so good they were worried they'd cannibalize much more expensive products. This is the reason Avoton is highly restricted in what products and price segments it's allowed into. If Intel opened the flood gates on Avoton they would risk cannibalizing their own server profits.
  • junky77 - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link

    So, they did what AMD couldn't for years? I'm trying to figure it out.. their offering seems to be a lot more interesting than AMD's stuff currently

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