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
Memory Subsystem: Bandwidth
As more memory channels complicate motherboard design and can be a problem for dense servers, the Xeon-D, Xeon E3 and Atom C2000 only have two memory channels. This makes quad channel operation a good way to differentiate up to the Xeon E5. The Xeon E3 and Atom are limited to DDR3-1600 as per JEDEC specifications, whereas the Xeon D should be able to command more bandwidth due to the use of DDR4-2133 DIMMs.
We measured the memory bandwidth in Linux. The binary was compiled with the Open64 compiler 5.0 (Opencc). It is a multi-threaded, OpenMP based, 64-bit binary. The following compiler switches were used:
-Ofast -mp -ipa
To keep things simple, we only report the Triad sub-benchmark of our OpenMP enabled Stream benchmark.
Using DIMMs with a 33% higher clock, the Xeon D gets a 25-38% boost in bandwidth compared to the Xeon E3. Basically, every percent increase in clock speed is translated in higher bandwidth. The Xeon E5 has almost twice as much bandwidth for only 50% more cores and should as result do better in some bandwidth intensive applications (mostly HPC).
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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?