X-Gene 1, Atom C2000 and Xeon E3: Exploring the Scale-Out Server World
by Johan De Gelas on March 9, 2015 2:00 PM ESTBenchmark Configuration
All tests were done on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS. We tested the HP Moonshot remotely. Our special thanks goes out to the team of HP EMEA Moonshot Discovery Lab of Grenoble (France). We tested both the Supermicro MicroCloud and the different motherboard configurations in our lab.
ASRock's C2750D4I
| CPU | Intel Atom C2750 |
| RAM | 4x 8GB DDR3 @1600 or 4x 16GB DDR3 @1333 (Intelligent Memory) |
| Internal Disks | 1x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | ASRock C2750D4I |
| PSU | Supermicro PWS-502 (80+) |
Intel's Xeon E3-1200 v3 – ASUS P9D-MH
| CPU | Intel Xeon processor E3-1240 v3 Intel Xeon processor E3-1230L v3 |
| RAM | 4x 8GB DDR3 @1600 |
| Internal Disks | 1x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | ASUS P9D-MH |
| PSU | Supermicro PWS-502 (80+) |
Intel's Xeon E3-1200 v2
| CPU | Intel Xeon processor E3-1220 v2 Intel Xeon processor E3-1265L v2 |
| RAM | 4x 8GB DDR3 @1600 |
| Internal Disks | 1x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | Intel S1200BTL |
| PSU | Supermicro PWS-502 (80+) |
Supermicro's MicroCloud SYS-5038ML-H8TRF
We enabled four nodes, each with an Intel Xeon E3-1230L v3. Each node was configured with:
| CPU | Intel Xeon processor E3-1230L v3 |
| RAM | 4x 8GB DDR3 @1600 |
| Internal Disks | 1x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | Super X10SLD-F |
| PSU | Dual Supermicro PWS-1K62P-1R (1.6 KW, 80+ Platinum) for 4 nodes |
We first tested with only one PSU, but that did not work out as the firmware kept all Xeons at their minimum clock speed of 800 MHz. Only with both PSUs active were the Xeon able to use all their p-states. Supermicro confirmed that four active nodes should be enough to make the PSU run efficiently.
HP Moonshot
We tested two different cartridges: the m400 and the m300. Below you can find the specs of the m400:
| CPU/SoC | AppliedMicro X-Gene 2.4 |
| RAM | 8x 8GB DDR3 @ 1600 |
| Internal Disks | m2 2280 Solid State 120GB |
| Cartridge | m400 |
And the m300:
| CPU/SoC | Atom C2750 2.4 |
| RAM | 8x 8GB DDR3 @ 1600 |
| Internal Disks | m2 2280 Solid State 120GB |
| Cartridge | m300 |
Other Notes
Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) power line. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs. We use the Racktivity ES1008 Energy Switch PDU to measure power consumption in our lab. We used the HP Moonshot ILO to measure the power consumption of the cartridges.
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IBleedOrange - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
EETimes is wrong.Google "Intel Denverton"
beginner99 - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
Maybe it would be good to mention the X-Gene is made on a 40nm process at the start of the article. I read the article and think for myself that the X-Gene is crap and in the end you get the explanation. It's on 40 nm vs Atoms on Intel 22 nm. It's a huge difference and currently the article is a bit misleading eg. shining a bad light on X-Gene and ARM. (And I say this even though I always was a proponent of Intel Big cores in almost all server applications).Stephen Barrett - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
If APM had a newer part to test then we would have tested it. XG2 is simply not out yet. So the fact that APM has their flagship SoC on an older process is not misleading... Its the facts. The currently available Intel parts have a process advantage.warreo - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
Mentioning it at the start would be good from a technical disclosure standpoint, but I'm not sure for the purposes of this article it truly matters. The article is comparing what is currently available now from APM and Intel. Reality is Intel will likely have a significant process advantage for the foreseeable future, and if you wanted to see a like for like comparison on a process basis, then you'll probably need to wait 2-3 years for X-Gene to get on 22nm, meanwhile Intel will have moved on to 10nm.CajunArson - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
The 40nm process is only really relevant when it comes to the power-consumption comparisons.A 28nm.. or 20nm or 16nm... part with the same cores at the same clockspeeds will register the exact same level of performance. The only difference will be that the smaller lithographic processes should provide that level of performance in a smaller power envelope.
JohanAnandtech - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
well, with so much time invested in an article, I always hope people will read the pages between page 1 and 18 too :-p. It is mentioned in the overview of the SoCs on page 5 and quite a few times at other pages too.colinstu - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
what server is on the bottom of the first page?JohanAnandtech - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
A very old MSI server :-). Just to show people what webfarms used before the micro server era.Samus - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
I use the Xeon E3-1230v3 in desktop applications all the time. It's basically an i7 for the price of an i5.And a lot of IT dept dump them on eBay cheap when they upgrade their servers. They can be had well under $200 lightly used. The 80w TDP could theoretically have some drawbacks for boost time, but the real-world performance according to passmark elongated tests doesn't seem to show any difference between it's boost potential and that of an 88w i7-k
Great CPU's.
Alone-in-the-net - Monday, March 9, 2015 - link
In both your compilers, you need to specify the -march=native so the the compiler can optimize for the architecture you are running on, -o3 is not enough. This enables the compiler to use cpu specific commands.