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
Compiling with gcc
A more real world benchmark to test the integer processing power of our Xeon servers is a Linux kernel compile. Although few people compile their own kernel, compiling other software on servers is a common task and this will give us a good idea of how the CPUs handle a complex build.
To do this we have downloaded the 3.11 kernel from kernel.org. We then compiled the kernel with the "time make -jx" command, where x is the maximum number of threads that the platform is capable of using. To make the graph more readable, the number of seconds in wall time was converted into the number of builds per hour.
The Xeon D delivers at least 65% better performance than the Xeon E3s. Considering the low TDP, that is pretty amazing. The Xeon E5 delivers 30% more with 50% more cores - as the Xeon E5 is twice as expensive, the Xeon D holds a massive performance per dollar advantage. The brawny Broadwell cores of the Xeon D compile no less than 3.7 times faster than the small Silvermont cores of the Atom, meaning that compiling definitely favors the more sophisticated cores.
If you regularly compile large projects, the Xeon D is one of the best choices you have - even compared to a highly clocked Core i7 solutions. The cheaper quad core i7s will perform like the Xeon E3-1240, the equally priced ($583) i7-5930k will do about 50% better, still below the Xeon D. The Xeon D offers you integrated dual 10 Gb Ethernet, SATA, USB, which should offer lower latency. The Xeon D can also support twice as much memory (128 GB vs 64 GB) and offer you a much lower power bill (45W vs 140W TDP), making hardware decisions around compilation based projects an easy choice to make.
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extide - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
So, I was thinking last night, that this chip is THE PERFECT enthusiast chip! All Intel needs to do is release an unlocked and socketed version (although that would be complex because there is currently no platform for it ...) although if we could get at least an unlocked version on an enthusiast style board it would be awesome.Think about it:
8 Broadwell cores -- Great!
12MB L3 -- Great!
24 Lanes PCIe 3.0 -- More than 16 or even skylakes rumored 20, pretty good. You could do things like 16x + 8x, or 8x + 8x + 4x + 4x (the two 4x being m.2 ssd's) which would support CF or SLI quite well and some fast ssd's.
2ch DDR4 -- plenty for gaming and most enthusiast applications
Dual 10GbE -- Just added Gravvy here, but would def help adoption of 10g in the enthusiast realm.
COME ON INTEL!!
extide - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Also, I forgot to add:This would be a great intermediate between the current regular consumer stuff (LGA 115x) and HPDE (LGA 2011x) -- A lot of people really see the LGA 2011 platform as overkill, even for enthusiasts, and it gets so expensive, with quad channel ddr4 and all that. This chip just seems to make so much sense. Now if intel priced it no more than the $500 mark, that would be awesome. Imagine, if AMD was more competitive, we might actually have that5 scenario.... Hopefully Zen is just great!
Namisecond - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link
Intel's tray price for this chip is listed at $199 for the 4-core and $581 for the 8-core. The price for the CPU+motherboard is almost $1K for the 8 core. which indicates the problem is not in the price of the chip itself.If you want cheap and low power consumption, I'd direct you to the S1150 platform with Xeon E3 V3 "L" series (13-45W) processors.
spikebike - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
For a home machine, small server, workstation, or similar the Xeon D 1520 looks even better. Faster clock, 1/3rd the price, same maximum ram, ecc, etc. Sure it's got 4 cores/8threads instead of more, but for many use cases that's not a big limitation. In quite a few cases spending the $400 different on RAM or SSDs will make a bigger difference.hifiaudio2 - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
Where can you get a 1520? Google searching is not finding anything for sale...hifiaudio2 - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
If I cannot find the 1520 for sale, what is the best bang for the buck i3 and MB combo (want to use ECC ram as well) for a Media server/transcode/nas? Low TDP, etc..jaziniho - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
Any word on whether HP plan to make a Moonshot cartridge featuring Xeon D? the 45W TDP seems to match up with some of the previous chips they have used.jeffsci - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Why do the results use a variety of OSS compilers? For an Intel Xeon processor, the Intel compilers are the most reliable. Is Open64 actively developed for Intel processors? And switching from GCC 4.8 to 4.9 with different flags...how is this even remotely scientific?needforsuv - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
so they just done to the 'regular' 4/8 i7/e3 what they did to the C2D in making the C2Q but more sophisticated I like it now wheres that lga 115x 8 coretabascosauz - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link
I hope that Mr. de Gelas will continue to learn and improve as a writer, because the grammar in this article is, in numerous places, rather iffy and AT has traditionally excelled in delivering detailed, grammatically correct content.