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
Web Infrastructure Power consumption
Next we tested the system under load.
(*) measured/calculated to mimic a Xeon-E3 "m300-ish" board.
Let us entangle the results by separating the power that goes to the SoC and the power that goes to the system. We did a similar though experiment in our X-Gene 1, Atom C2000 and Xeon E3 comparison.
| Power Consumption SoC Calculations | ||
| SoC | Power Delta = Power Web - Idle (W) |
Power SoC = Power Delta + Idle SoC + Chipset (W) |
| Xeon E3- 1240 v3 3.4 | 95-42 = 53 | 53+3+3 = 59 |
| Xeon E3-1230L v2 1.8 | 68-41 = 27 (45-18 = 27) |
27+3+3 = 33 |
| Xeon D-1540 | 73-31 = 42 | 42+2+0 = 44 |
| Atom C2750 2.4 | 25-11 = 13 | 13+3+0 = 16 |
Now let us combine our calculated SoC power consumption and the power measurements in the graph above. The Atom C2750 still make sense in a micro server if CPU performance is not a priority: think static webservers and caching servers. You can fit an Atom C2750 server inside a power envelop of 25W as HP has proven. Based upon our own experience, such a Xeon D system would probably require more like 55 - 60 W.
If CPU performance is somewhat important, the Xeon D is the absolute champion. A Xeon E3-1230L server with similar features (2x 10 Gb for example) will probably consume almost the same amount of power as we have witnessed on our Asus P9D board (68 W). Given a decently scaling application with enough threads or some kind of virtualization (KVM/Hyper-V/Docker), the Xeon D server will thus consume at most about 1/3 more than an Xeon E3-1230L, but deliver almost twice as much performance.
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zodiacfml - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
this is the reason why Intel focuses on mobile, it benefits their server cpus too.the 14nm process is the one to thank for these massive improvements. Samsung also has 14nm and the S6 Exynos is in similar achievement
Refuge - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
I disagree, the Exynos is no where close to a similar achievement.Granted it is doing better than Qualcomm's equivalent at the moment.
But I'm also faster than a fat man with a broken leg running on a hot and humid day.
zodiacfml - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Still, these 14nm SoCs are the best in their class as they pack more cores while using less power.LukaP - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
Just a note, Samsung's (and TSMC's 16nm FF(+) process isnt really 16nm entirely. The interconnects are still 28nm making it not nearly as dense as intel's 14nm, as well as being more leaky. IIRC their density and leakage can be compared to intels 22nm TriGate in the times of Ivy Bridgenils_ - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Few questions:1. Why did you disable x2apic?
2. Did the Large Page allocation in the Java Benchmark actually work? It can be a bit tricky some times and then falls back to 4KiB pages
3. What were the JVM settings for elasticsearch?
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
1. Was out of the box disabled. I have to admit I did not check that option. Performance impact should be neglible though.2. I have no monitored that, but there was a performance impact if we disabled it.
3. ES_heap_size = 20 G; otherwise standard ES settings
Daniel Egger - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Wow, that is still quite pricey here. For the price of the SuperMicro tower you can actually get a 1U 2S Xeon E5 system with one socket equipped and some memory. I'd really love to replace my home server (running on Core i5 rather than Xeon E3 for efficiency reasons, those C chipset suck balls) with one of those systems if they can make them efficient and quiet.hifiaudio2 - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Two questions:1. How does the Xeon D compare to the c2700 series for a home NAS that will also serve as an Emby server and HDHR DVR (when that software is available). Could be one or two 1080p transcodes going on at the same time at most. Usually no transcoding if I am using Kodi or something that can natively play back the file, but for remote viewing or random uses over the network, some transcoding by Emby could be required -- if you are not familiar with Emby think of the same thing using Plex. So would the extra power of the Xeon D be of use to me, or is the 8 core c2750 plenty for the aforementioned use case?
2. If I do go with this unit, which dimms specifically does it use? The Supermicro c2750 board takes laptop style dimms. What does this take?
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
I can answer 2: see the picture here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9185/intel-xeon-d-re... RDIMMs or UDIMMS (= basically "normal" DDR-4) will do.hifiaudio2 - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Thanks.. So this ram:?http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-PC4-2133-Registered-...
And what is the SR x4 / DR x8 difference in the two choices for the 8gb sticks?