The Intel Xeon E7 v2 Review: Quad Socket, Up to 60 Cores/120 Threads
by Johan De Gelas on February 21, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Xeon
- Ivy Bridge EX
- server
- Brickland
SAP S&D Benchmark
The SAP SD (Sales and Distribution, 2-Tier Internet Configuration) benchmark is an interesting benchmark as it is a real-world client-server application. It is one of those rare industry benchmarks that actually means something to the real IT professionals. Even better, the SAP ERP software is a prime example of where these Xeon E7 v2 chips will be used. We looked at SAP's benchmark database for these results.
Most of the results below all run on Windows 2008/2012 and MS SQL Server (both 64-bit). Every 2-Tier Sales & Distribution benchmark was performed with SAP's latest ERP 6 Enhancement Package 4. These results are not comparable with any benchmark performed before 2009. We analyzed the SAP Benchmark in-depth in one of our earlier articles. The profile of the benchmark has remained the same:
- Very parallel resulting in excellent scaling
- Low to medium IPC, mostly due to "branchy" code
- Somewhat limited by memory bandwidth
- Likes large caches (memory latency)
- Very sensitive to sync ("cache coherency") latency
Let's see how the quad Xeon compares to the previous Intel generation, the cheaper dual socket systems, and the RISC competition.
The new Xeon E7 v2 is no less than 80% faster than its predecessor. The nearest RISC competitor (IBM Power 7 3.55) is a lot more expensive and delivers only 70% of the performance. We have little doubt that the performance/watt ratio of the Xeon E7 v2 is a lot better too.
Intel delivers a serious blow to the RISC competition. For about 11 months, the Oracle SPARC T5-8 delivered the highest SAPS of all octal-socket machines. This insanely expensive machine, which keeps 1024 threads in flight (but executes 256 of them) is now beaten by the Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 2800E. The 240 thread octal Xeon E7-8890 v2 outperforms the former champion of Oracle by about 18%. The SPARC comeback is still remarkable, although we are pretty sure that the Fujitsu server will be less expensive. Even better is you do not have to pay the Oracle support costs.
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TiGr1982 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
I think, 6 cores on desktop for $300 will NOT happen this year.Because if it will, then you'll get $300 4 core i7 on mainstream 1150 & $300 6 core i7 on new 2011 simultaneously on the market.
To adjust this, they'll have to sell 1150 4 core i7 for $200-$220, like Core i5 now.
This is not realistic, because that's Intel we're talking about, right?...
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
That's actually the plan, except it won't be $300. I think the latest leaks suggest that the lowest end Haswell-E SKU will be a 6-core K series at ~$400. The other two price points remain about the same, $600 and $1000 for the 8-core SKU's.TiGr1982 - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
To me, seems too good to be true. Will require a major change of mindset inside Intel to start selling 6 core for $400 and lower 8 core for $600 :)(while 8 core XE for $1000 is not surprising at all)
Harry Lloyd - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
The thing is LGA2011 mobos are really expensive, so the CPU price does not have to be that high. You can get a good B85 mobo even for less than 100 $, and an LGA2011 mobos start at 250 or even 300 $.I would not pay 300 $ for a mobo, and 400 $ for a 6-core CPU, that would still be ridiculous. I hate this stagnation. The transision from 1-core to 4-core happend really quickly.
MrSpadge - Saturday, February 22, 2014 - link
The smallest 6-core K model has been around 500$ for quite some time, so I see no problem going to 400$ this time. 8 cores for 600$ would indeed be a significant step for some, though.psyq321 - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link
Well, if Intel manages to castrate the HEDT "E" version enough so that it does not pose any threat to their Xeon revenue, price drop might happen.However, one factor not to be underestimated is total available market and how much are target consumers for this kind of hardware willing to pay. I have no data, but for some reason I think only small % of "power users" (>very< power users) need 8 cores today and they would probably be willing to shell out $1000.
Thing is, if you are Intel, you will probably making the calculation: what if we drop the price to, say, $600? Is this going to bring us more customers? Is this going to cannibalize some of, more lucrative, Xeon market?
I suppose if Intel fuses out TSX, VT-D, ECC memory support and, of course, QPI (which is what they do anyway with Sandy-E and Ivy-E HEDT CPUs) the chip would practically be next to useless to most Xeon customers. So the remaining issue is the market.
f0d - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
i agreei was hoping for 8 core ivy bridge-e chips but had to settle for 6 cores which i can easily use all of
i do a LOT of video encoding using handbrake and that program just loves cores, i easily saturate all 12 threads with my settings in handbrake so i do believe it could use a single socket 8 core well (i have read tests that show handbrake not liking dual/quad socket systems for more cores - but does improve when using lots of cores on a single socket)
MT007 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
You have a error on page 8, in your fourth paragraph you have the opteron as 2.4ghz and only with a score of 2481. From your graph it should have been 2.3ghz and 2723?webmastir - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
They don't tend to fix errors/read comments I don't think.JohanAnandtech - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
Sure we do :-)