Intel On the Offensive: Roadmap Details and Analysis
by Kristopher Kubicki & Jarred Walton on June 14, 2005 4:33 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Server Side of Things
With the exception of Yonah showing up where Xeon should be, there is very little new for servers.Dual core is inevitably moving toward servers, and the chip that will spearhead that launch is Dempsey. Dempsey is similar to Smithfield, but at the same time, it offers HyperThreading support, 1066FSB, Demand Based Switching and Vanderpool Technology. Expect Dempsey to show up around Q1'06. The enterprise version of Dempsey, dubbed Paxville, will act as the enterprise large cache version of Dempsey, but at a slower 800MHz front side bus. Expect Paxville at about the same time as Dempsey. Intel makes specific note on the roadmap that the processor brand name for Paxville and Dempsey is TBD - maybe Xeon has had its end?
Intel Single Core Volume Server Lineup LGA775 |
|||
Chipset |
FSB Clock |
Cache Size |
Launch |
Xeon 3.6GHz |
667MHz |
2MB L2 |
Q4'05 |
Xeon 3.4GHz |
667MHz |
2MB L2 |
Soon |
Xeon 3.2GHz |
667MHz |
2MB L2 |
Soon |
Xeon 3.0GHz |
667MHz |
2MB L2 |
Soon |
Xeon 2.8GHz |
667MHz |
2MB L2 |
Q3'05 |
Until dual core shows up on servers, we have to settle for Iriwindale (Prescott 2M) server chipsets. Since Nocona 3.8GHz and 4.0GHz were canceled, there hasn't been much news on the server lineup. All new 3.4GHz and faster Irwindale chipsets will receive support for DBS (Demand Based Switching), but otherwise remain identical in core to their slower alternatives. Potomac and Cranford have all of their SKUs announced until Paxville comes along next year.
Dempsey and Paxville will need a new platform to run on. As in chipsets past, there are two next generation chipisets for server motherboards: Greencreek (the successor to E7535), and Blackford (the successor to E7520 and E7320). Blackford and Blackford VS are the base chipsets supporting dual core server processors. Blackford will support 4 FBD channels, 3 PCIe x8 segments and a total of 64GB of memory. Vanderpool Technology is supported on the motherboard as well as iAMT. Greencreek differs slightly by using two of its PCIe x8 segments for an x16 PCIe graphics slot and a snoop filter. Both chips also support 64bit PCI-X and PCI.
Closing Thoughts
There are clearly some interesting things moving forward inside Intel. The Sossaman project is probably one of our more favorite tidbits - four core Yonah blades would certainly pique our attention. The slightly lower clockspeed has us concerned about whether or not Yonah will really be able to compete with similar offerings from AMD and even Pentium D processors at the same time, but the incredibly low power requirements are enough to impress anyone.The unified Broadwater family scheduled to replace 945P and 955X a year from now also has our attention. There was some speculation several months ago about Intel unifying their Xeon and Itanium socket design within the next year or so. While the roadmaps certainly don't indicate anything like that, unifying the desktop chipset families first might be a step toward that sort of unification.
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Reflex - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
VT/Pacifica is a niche technology, that much is for certain. It will definatly help the server segment(imagine 4 'machine' clusters that are all running on the same hardware) and some enthusiasts may like it(although I bet most won't use it often to maximize performance), but its not going to take the world by storm or anything.As for Yonah and power savings, remember that the entire platform must be compared to comparable AMD solutions, not just the CPU. AMD builds most northbridge functions(memory controller being the obvious one) into thier CPU which saves a considerable amount of power, and allows single chip chipset solutions like nForce to be practical. Measuring power consumption of just the CPU's without the supporting platform is apples to oranges.
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
And in order to be 100% precise :-) Dual OS natively is brought to x86 for the first time through these two technologies. The current solutions require emulation/software layer and thus exhibit higher overheads.The problem though lies in the fact that even dual cores under the same OS can not cope with heavy multitasking (eg two heavy applications) without a significant perf. penalty for both. So as correctly pointed in this site, its another thing to increase heavy multitasking performance and another to actually use those scenarios since the hit will be noticeable. The same logic applies even more exaggerated in the case of two OSes and their apps running concurrently... (and by that I do not mean Solitaire XP together with Opera for Linux; this is something even Vanderpool can do :-)
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
#14 I totally agree with you, but that does not change the fact that VT/Pacifica is a niche feature at best (admins, testers etc)KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
StriderGT: Well dual OSes can be done right now with overhead; thats what VMware, UML and such are for. Part of the goal is to minimize overhead. VT nor Pacifica are limited to dual core CPUs by the way.Kristopher
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
I do not think that anyone besides administrators would need VT, let alone use such a thing. DualBoot seems bulky but its way faster and more robust. A real usage scenario would require you to boot in XP to play games reboot in Linux to surf or whatever, otherwise two OSes running together will impose a real overhead. So you only gain the few mins or secs between each boot and lose performacewise. Its more like look what dual cores can do feature than what most peole will do...cscpianoman - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Interesting, but I would like to have a chart of AMD to the side. Is this coming tomorrow?Of all the chips Yonah looks the most promising and yet as I was glancing through it would be confined to certain applications. The energy requirements are stellar! I would love to see how AMD is going to compete.
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
StriderGT: Actually I think VT is pretty neat. I run Linux on one machine and Windows for work. Putting both on the same computer would be really awesome.Kristopher
StriderGT - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
hope so 2 #9 :-) because otherwise we will stick to "virtualized" performance gains... Can u say Vanderpooled?!? A real show stopper for desktop users!BTW I forgot to give a thumbs up to intel engineers for their latest innovation. The dual core superglue.
PS I think that marketing dep of intel devoured their last real engineers long ago. So now they meet apple and we get platformization en extremis... I love this buzzzzzzzzzzwordzzzzzzzz
flatblastard - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Sure hope AMD has their floatation devices handy.KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, June 14, 2005 - link
Kensei: Ooops - fixed.Kristopher