The Intel Xeon D Review: Performance Per Watt Server SoC Champion?
by Johan De Gelas on June 23, 2015 8:35 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon-D
- Broadwell-DE
Benchmark Configuration
All tests were done on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (soon to be upgraded to 15.04). Aside from the SuperMicro Xeon-D system, we also have the ASRock Rack C2750D4I (eight core Silvermont), a Xeon E3-1200 v3 system, a Xeon E3-1200 v2 system, a 1P Xeon E5-2600L v3 and a HP Moonshot cartridge based system. We tested the HP Moonshot cartridges remotely.
Supermicro's 5028D-TN4T
| CPU | Xeon D-1540 2.0 GHz |
| RAM | 4x16GB DDR4-2133 |
| Internal Disks | Samsung 850 Pro 128 GB |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro X10SLD-F |
| PSU | FSP250-50LC (250 W, 80+ Bronze) |
Below you can find most of the CPU settings in the BIOS:
ASRock's C2750D4I
| CPU | Intel Atom C2750 2.4 GHz |
| RAM | 4x8GB DDR3-1600 |
| Internal Disks | Samsung 850 Pro 128 GB |
| Motherboard | ASRock C2750D4I |
| PSU | Supermicro PWS-502 (80+) |
The Xeon D is not a replacement for the Atom C2000. Although the Xeon D is also a SoC, the Atom C2000 remains Intel low power options for microservers. Of course, we want to know how much power you save, and how large the performance trade-off is.
Intel's Xeon E3-1200 v3 – ASUS P9D-MH
| CPU | Intel Xeon processor E3-1240 v3 3.4 GHz Intel Xeon processor E3-1230L v3 1.8 GHz |
| RAM | 4x8GB DDR3-1600 |
| Internal Disks | 1x Samsung 850 Pro 128 GB |
| Motherboard | ASUS P9D-MH |
| PSU | Supermicro PWS-502 (80+) |
As the Xeon D is limited to 2 GHz (2.6 GHz turboboost), higher clocked Xeon E3s might still make sense where single threaded performance is a major concern. The Xeon E3-1230L was included as a low power alternative, although we wonder it still make sense, considering that the Xeon E3 needs a separate 1-4W chipset (C220).
Intel's Xeon E3-1200 v2
| CPU | Intel Xeon processor E3-1265L v2 |
| RAM | 4x8GB DDR3-1600 |
| Internal Disks | 1x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | Intel S1200BTL |
| PSU | Supermicro PWS-502 (80+) |
The previous generation low power Xeon E3.
Intel's Xeon E5 Server – "Wildcat Pass" (2U Chassis)
| CPU | One Intel Xeon processor E5-2650L v3 (1.8GHz, 12c, 30MB L3, 65W) |
| RAM | 128GB (8x16GB) Samsung M393A2G40DB0 (RDIMM) |
| Internal Disks | 2x Intel MLC SSD710 200GB |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board Wildcat Pass |
| PSU | Delta Electronics 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
Although our E5 server is not comparable to the other systems, it important to gauge where a low power E5 model would land. We like to understand when it make sense to invest more money in an Xeon E5 system, and here we only use one Xeon. Note that this system also requires power from a separate PCH.
HP Moonshot
More info about this configuration can be found in our previous article about micro server SoCs.
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 | M.2 2280 Solid State 120GB |
| Cartridge | m400 |
And the m300:
| CPU/SoC | Atom C2750 2.4 |
| RAM | 8x 8GB DDR3 @ 1600 |
| Internal Disks | M.2 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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
90 Comments
View All Comments
Kjella - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Server on a chip? It's not intended for use with a display, it does all it's "supposed to" do for the hyperscale market without any display.close - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
"Intel was able to combine 8 of them together with dual 10 Gbit, 4 USB 3.0 controllers, 6 SATA 3 controller and quite a bit more".This ^^ makes it a SoC. Ok, a video output would be nice but that certainly doesn't disqualify it.
ats - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
cause video isn't required or even wanted in this market segment. It is a SoC, which simply means system on a chip and doesn't have some ironclad definition. Hell, most "SoC" chips aren't really systems on a chip anyways and require significant supporting logic (this is true for just about any cell phone SoC on the market too).bill.rookard - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Exactly, you would tend to use remote management over the network to admin this type of a unit. I have several rackmounted servers in my basement (I do some home-serving of websites over a business class connection) and while I do have them actually hooked up to a display, I can hardly remember the last time I looked at them as 99.9% of the time I SSH into everything for administration.About the only time you'd ever really use a display is if you were doing multiple VMs of assorted types. Beyond that, it's wattage wasted.
ats - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Yeah honestly, having several SM boards with their ILM system, the only time I'd ever hook up a display is if the network was down. The SM ILM will fully proxy pretty much anything you want and give you a 1200p display that works for just about anything. And you can remotely hook up CDs, DVDs, BRs, USB, etc through it along with the stand console and keyboard/mouse functions. Its a very nice solution.nightbringer57 - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Basically, you don't need video output.Even if you do, mainboard manufacturers usually include a third-party chip with dedicated functions that, along other things, provide a VGA port usable for a server use.
In this case, the AST2400 chip offers some basic GPU functions with a VGA port along with many remote control-related stuff.
Adding all those functions to the Intel SoC would be awfully expensive. The chip only requires a simple PCIe x1 connection from the SoC, but provides hundreds of additional pins. Not only would those functions probably be hard to implement on a relatively recent 14nm process, but it would require at least 300 new pins on the SoC to add all the 3rd party chip's functions on it, which is almost impossible to do.
Th-z - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
There doesn't seem to have a concrete definition for the term SoC, but it's ridiculous now with the term SoC bandwagon. Everything seems to be called "SoC" these days as long as a chip has more than one functions integrated. One of examples is people even called current console's integrated CPU and GPU chip as SoC, which doesn't even have networking and other peripheral units in it. When a system has so many "SoCs" inside, the term really has lost its meaning and significance.redzo - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
I'm thinking this is a bad name for a product like this. It reminds of the infamous Celeron D and Pentium D line.nandnandnand - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Anyone who can figure out Xeon D exists can probably tell the differencewussupi83 - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
I agree with redzo, I think anyone who can figure out a 'Xeon D' exists AND remembers that Pentium & Celeron D's existed would initially assume this is a budget Xeon - which it's clearly not. E4 sounds pretty logical. But sure lets just put D...