HPC: Watts per Job

Last, but not least, we have a look at power consumption. First we measure idle power consumption.

Idle Power Consumption,

We did not expect the E7 v3 to consume more energy at idle than the previous E7, but sure enough it did. Maybe the DDR4 memory buffers (Jordan Creek 2) need more energy than the previous ones?

For load power testing we used the OpenFOAM test and measured at the 95th percentile, which is basically the power consumed when processing the most parallel part.

HPC Power Consumption - 95 th percentile

These quad socket systems are made for reliability, and not quite as much as for performance-per-watt. The end result is that these quad socket servers need about as much power as your fabric iron. To put this in perspective: the Xeon E5-2699v3 is considered a real power hog among the Xeon E5s. Most of the other dual Xeon E5 servers are in the 390-450W range.

Let us see how much watt we need for each OpenFOAM job.

Total HPC Energy Consumption per Job

The new Xeon E7-8890v3 is a tiny bit more efficient, but it is almost neglible.

HPC: OpenFoam Intel's Benchmarks & Final Words
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  • TheSocket - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link

    They sure wouldn't lose the x86-64 license since they own it and Intel is licensing it from AMD.
  • melgross - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link

    But without the license from Intel, it is worthless. There's also the question of how that works. I believe that Intel doesn't need to license back the 64 bit extensions.
  • Kevin G - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link

    This one of the reasons why it would be in Intelsat best interest to let AMD be bought out with the 32 bit license intact. The 64 bit license/patents going to a third party that doesn't want to share would be a dooms day scenario for Intel. Legally it wouldn't affect anything currently on the market but it'd throw Intel's future roadmap into the trash.
  • Death666Angel - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link

    Pretty sure some regulatory bodies would step in if Intel were the only x86 game in town. And x86-64 is AMD property.
  • JumpingJack - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link

    Any patents on x86 are long expired, AMD only owns the IP related to the extension of the x86 not the instruction set.
  • patrickjp93 - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link

    Not true. The U.S. government has them locked up under special military-based protections. Absolutely no one can make and sell x86 without Intel's and the DOD's permission.
  • Kevin G - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link

    Got a source for that?

    I know that DoD did some validation on x86 many years ago. (The Pentium core used by Larrabee had the DoD changes incorporated.)
  • haplo602 - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link

    hmm ... where's the RAS feature comparison/test ? did I miss it in the article ?
  • TeXWiller - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link

    In the E7v3 vs POWER comparison table, there should be 32 PCIe lanes instead 40 in the Xeon column.
  • TeXWiller - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link

    Additionally, it is the L3 in POWER8 that runs half of the core speed. L2 runs at the core speed.

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