The Xeon E5-2600: Dual Sandy Bridge for Servers
by Johan De Gelas on March 6, 2012 9:27 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Virtualization
- Xeon
- Opteron
- Cloud Computing
The massive 416 mm² large chip contains no less than 2263 million transistors. Each generation of Intel and AMD server CPUs seem to get a bit larger as you can see below.
So how does the new Xeon compare to the older Xeons and the latest Opterons? Let's take a look at the paper specs:
|
Xeon E5-2600 "Sandy Bridge EP" |
Opteron 6200 "Interlagos" |
Opteron 6100 "Magny-cours" |
Xeon 5600 "Westmere" |
|
| Cores (Modules)/Threads | 8/16 | 8/16 | 12/12 | 6/12 |
| L1 Instruction | 8x 32 KB 4-way | 8x 64 KB 2-way | 12x 64 KB 2-way | 6x 32 KB 4-way |
| L1 Data | 8x 32 KB 8-way | 16x 16 KB 4-way | 12x 64 KB 2-way | 6x 32 KB 8-way |
| L2 Cache | 8x 256 KB | 4x 2MB | 12x 0.5MB | 6x 256 KB |
| L3 Cache | 20 MB | 2x 8MB | 2x 6MB | 12MB |
|
Max. Memory Bandwidth (Per socket) |
51.2 GB/s | 51.2 GB/s | 42.6 GB/s | 32 GB/s |
| IMC Clock Speed | = corespeed | 2GHz | 1.8GHz | 2GHz |
| Interconnect | 2x QPI 2.0 (8 GT/s) | 4x HT 3.1 (6.4 GT/s) | 4x HT 3.1 (6.4 GT/s) | 2x QPI (4.8-6.4 GT/s) |
| Transistors (Billion) | 2,26 | 2x 1,2 | 2x 904 | 1,17 |
| Die Size (mm²) | 416 | 2x 315 | 2x 346 | 248 |
The new Xeon comes with a huge die, and with its ring interconnect and improved RAS, it starts to look more like a successor of the Westmere-EX than the Westmere-EP Xeon. In fact the ring of the Xeon E5 is more advanced: it has a PCIe agent, PCU and IMC on the same ring as the 8 cores.
The massive die, the two extra cores, the integration of the PCIe controller and no competition in the high-end have made it easier for Intel to justify a price increase. The Sandy Bridge EP is somewhat more expensive than its predecessor, as you can see in the table below. The first clockspeed mentioned is the regular clock, the second the turbo clock with all cores active (most realistic one) and the last the maximum turbo clock.
| Intel new vs. Intel 2-socket SKU Comparison | |||||||||
|
Xeon 5600 |
Cores/ Threads |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price |
Xeon E-5 |
Cores/ Threads |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price |
| High Performance | High Performance | ||||||||
| 2690 | 8/16 | 135W | 2.9/3.3/3.8 | $2057 | |||||
| X5690 | 6/12 | 130W | 3.46/3.6/3.73 | $1663 | 2680 | 8/16 | 130W | 2.7/3.1/3.5 | $1723 |
| 2670 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.6/3/3.3 | $1552 | |||||
| 2665 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.4/2.8/3.1 | $1440 | |||||
| X5675 | 6/12 | 95W | 3.06/3.33/3.46 | $1440 | |||||
| X5660 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.8/3.06/3.2 | $1219 | 2660 | 8/16 | 95W | 2.2/2.6/3.0 | $1329 |
| X5650 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.66/2.93/3.06 | $996 | 2650 | 8/16 | 95W | 2/2.4/2.8 | $1107 |
| Midrange | Midrange | ||||||||
| E5649 | 6/12 | 80W | 2.53/2.66/2.8 | $774 | 2640 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.5/2.5/3 | $885 |
| 2630 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.3/2.3/2.8 | $612 | |||||
| E5645 | 6/12 | 80W | 2.4/2.53/2.66 | $551 | |||||
| 2620 | 6/12 | 95W | 2/2/2.5 | $406 | |||||
| E5620 | 4/8 | 80W | 2.4/2.53/2.66 | $387 | |||||
| High clock / budget | High clock / budget | ||||||||
| X5647 | 4/8 | 130W | 2.93/3.06/3.2 | $774 | 2643 | 4/8 | 130W | 3.3/3.3/3.5 | $885 |
| E5630 | 4/8 | 80W | 2.53/2.66/2.8 | $551 | |||||
| E5607 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.26 | $276 | 2609 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.4 | $294 |
| Power Optimized | Power Optimized | ||||||||
| L5640 | 6/12 | 60W | 2.26/2.4/2.66 | $996 | 2650L | 8/16 | 70W | 1.8/2/2.3 | $1107 |
| 5630 | 4/8 | 40W | 2.13/2.26/2.4 | $551 | 2630L | 8/16 | 60W | 2/2/2.5 | $662 |
The Xeon E5-2690's somewhat out of the ordinary TDP (135W) is easy to explain. With a very small TDP increase (+5W) Intel's engineers noticed they could raise the clock of the best SKU with another 200 MHz from 2.7 GHz (130W) to 2.9 GHz. The E5-2690 was more or less a safeguard in the event that the Interlagos Opteron turned out to be a real "Bulldozer". As the Opteron could not meet these expectations, the high performance of the 135W chip allows Intel to ask more than $2000 for its best Xeon EP. Which is quite a bit more than what the best Xeon EP used to sell for so far ($1500-1600).
Since the new Xeon has two extra cores and integrates the I/O hub (IOH), it is understandable that the TDP values are a bit higher compared to the older Xeon.
How does these new Xeon SKUs compare to the Opteron? See below.
| AMD vs. Intel 2-socket SKU Comparison | |||||||||
|
Xeon E5 |
Cores/ Threads |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price | Opteron |
Modules/ Integer cores |
TDP |
Clock (GHz) |
Price |
| High Performance | High Performance | ||||||||
| 2665 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.4/2.8/3.1 | $1440 | |||||
| 2650 | 8/16 | 95W | 2/2.4/2.8 | $1107 | 6282 SE | 8/16 | 140W | 2.6/3.0/3.3 | $1019 |
| Midrange | Midrange | ||||||||
| 2640 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.5/2.5/3 | $885 | 6276 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.3/2.6/3.2 | $788 |
| 2630 | 6/12 | 95W | 2.3/2.3/2.8 | $639 | 6274 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.2/2.5/3.1 | $639 |
| 6272 | 8/16 | 115W | 2.0/2.4/3.0 | $523 | |||||
| 2620 | 6/12 | 95W | 2/2/2.5 | $406 | 6238 | 6/12 | 115W | 2.6/2.9/3.2 | $455 |
| 6234 | 6/12 | 115W | 2.4/2.7/3.0 | $377 | |||||
| High clock / budget | High clock / budget | ||||||||
| 2643 | 4/8 | 130W | 3.3/3.3/3.5 | $885 | |||||
| 6220 | 4/8 | 115W | 3.0/3.3/3.6 | $455 | |||||
| 2609 | 4/4 | 80W | 2.4 | $294 | 6212 | 4/8 | 115W | 2.6/2.9/3.2 | $266 |
| Power Optimized | Power Optimized | ||||||||
| 2630L | 8/16 | 60W | 2/2/2.5 | $662 | 6262HE | 8/16 | 85W | 1.6/2.1/2.9 | $523 |
Let's start with the midrange first, as the competition is the fiercest there and these SKUs are among the most popular on the market. Based on the paper specs, AMD's 6276, 6274 and Intel's 2640 and 2630 are in a neck-and-neck race. AMD offers 16 smaller integer clusters, while Intel offers 6 or 8 heavy, slightly higher clocked cores with SMT. And while we did not receive a Xeon E5-2630 for benchmarking purposes, we were able to quickly simulate one by disabling the 2 cores of our Xeon 2660, which gave us a six-core processor at 2.2 GHz with 20 MB L3-cache. This pseudo-2660 should perform very similar to the real Xeon 2630, which is clocked 4.5% higher, but has 5 MB less L3-cache.
Meanwhile in the high performance segment we'll be comparing our six-core 2660 with the Opteron 6276. The CPUs in this comparison aren't going to be in the same price bracket, but as the AMD platform is typically a bit cheaper the 2660 and the Opteron 6276 end up having similar total platform costs. Otherwise for a more straightforward comparison based solely on CPU prices the 2660's closest competitor would be the Opteron 6274. We don't have one of those on hand, but you can get a pretty good idea of how that would compare by knocking 4% off of the performance of the 6276..
Finally, for the "Power Optimized" market there seems to be little contest over who is going to win there. Intel's chip is a bit more expensive, but it offers a much lower TDP, just as many threads, and a higher clockspeed. Considering that the Intel chip also integrates the PCIe controller, it looks like Intel will have no trouble winning this battle by a landslide. Fortunately for AMD, this review is mostly about the more popular midrange market.
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think-ITB-live-OTB - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
Can i ask you a question? do you at least get paid when you bend over for Intel?These are Server Chips - who cares about single-threaded application performance.. or Corporate IPOs. AMD has delivered far greater TCO/performance than Intel has for at least a Decade and running.
You want to praise a company like a Deity? ARM Holdings. nuff said. They can design a 35 dollar computer that can decode H.264 better than Intel can on SoCs that run 4x's the price. Currently have more Chips in more devices than in Intels entire history and Push Power envelopes far beyond anything Intel could ever muster.
Just you wait before the Storm ARM and its Licensees unleash as it will eventually take over ALL markets including the Server space (Calxeda much?). Oh and as for Apple. (an ARM Licensee itself... i can see them moving to in-house ARM designs pretty soon). 4-6-8 Core Cortex A15 (with A7 core for low power iPod/tablet sync) Macbook Airs anyone?
Intel is becoming the strongest of the Dinosaurs. But even the T-Rex fell eventually.
swizeus - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
We have been using the Flemish/Dutch Web 2.0 website Nieuws.be as a benchmark for some time. 99% of the loads on the database are selects and about 5% of them are stored procedures.The database is loaded 104%. is it possible ?
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Stored procedures can contain selects :-)fredisdead - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
From the 'article' .....'The Opteron might also have a role in the low end, price sensitive HPC market, where it still performs very well. It won't have much of chance in the high end clustered one as Intel has the faster and more power efficient PCIe interface'
Well, if that's the case, why exactly would AMD be scoring so many design wins with Interlagos. Including this one ...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394515,00.as...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Cray-Ti...
U think those guys at Cray were going for low performance ? In fact, seems like AMD has being rather cleaning up in the HPC market since the arrival of Interlagos. And the markets have picked up on it, AMD stock is thru the roof since the start of the year. Or just see how many Intel processors occupy the the top 10 supercomputers on the planet. Nuff said ...
InsaneScientist - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Johan, where in the specs where you have this line:Transistors (Billion) 2,26 2x 1,2 2x 904 1,17
I sure hope that 2x 904 (Billion) is a typo... otherwise AMD has some serious explaining to do. ;)
Should be 2x ,904 (I think? Would be 2x .904 for me, I assume you follow the same rules...)
iliev - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Page 5, Benchmark ConfigurationR2208GZ4GSSPP specs table... E5-2660 is 2.2Ghz, and not 2.9GHz
dodge776 - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
Hi Johan,Always look forward to reading your server reviews at AT, but no SAPS benchmarks this time?
ppennisi - Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - link
For maximum VMware performance on Opteron Interlagos cpu under VMWARE it's better to disable C1E and enable, where available, HPC mode.I found myself on a fresh installation of ESXi 5.0 on Dell R715 that leaving C1E enable literally crippled vm performance.
boudini - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
I'm not sure I would recommend using iray as a reliable benchmark renderer in 3ds max. It is not a self configuring mental ray, but an unbiased renderer which behaves fairly differently to mental ray, and most other renderers such as vray, final render and brazil. It is comparible to maxwell and fryrender, but is very new compared to those two longer established unbiased render engines. It also attempts to use the gpu to add to its calculations as well - which could significantly skew results.Using mental ray or vray might well give you quite a different result, and besides I don't think iray is widely used in the industry.
omega4711 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
This. The results of iray are mostly dependent on the GPU. The lack of proper scaling certainly isn't due to Amdahl's law. Just use mentalray with small enough render buckets and you can easily satisfy 64+ threads.Also, due to the limitations of iray, it can (at this moment) only be used in about 1-3% of real world scenarios.
Please, for all the people that care about these benchmarks, use mentalray and/or vray.
Otherwise, it's a brilliant article.