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.
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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?