Three series Choose servers from Intel mainstream processors

                  Like a normal desktop processor, a server processor is also the core device in a server and a primary measure of server performance. What are the mainstream server processor products on the market? What are the corresponding mainstream products to choose from? This is one of the issues that many readers are very concerned about.

First, the mainstream quad-core: 5400/5500 series

Intel's Xeon series processors are the mainstream products in the x86 server market, and with the constant technology Development, Intel's Xeon series processors are also shifting from Netburst to Core and Nehalem microarchitecture. The current mainstream Intel Xeon quad-core series processors on the market include the 5400/5500 series. The 5400 series is the Harpertown core and the 5500 series is the Gainestown core (Nehalem-EP), both of which use the proven 45nm process. It delivers powerful performance for a standard enterprise data center that automatically and intelligently adjusts server performance based on your application requirements. They are up to several times better than earlier single-core servers.

Among them, the new 45nm Harpertown core processor, which was launched on November 12th, 2007, is called the Xeon 5400 series. It is a product launched by Intel to counter the AMD launch of the 4-core Barcelona processor. The front side bus speed is 1333MHz, 1600MHz, and the characters before the model number are the thermal power consumption level: L means TDP 50W, E means 80W, and X means 120W.

Technically, the quad-core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors feature a new transistor technology that effectively reduces leakage – hundreds of millions of transistors inside it use Intel’s latest 铪-based High-K metal gate technology, transistor performance can be increased by 20%, but energy consumption is reduced by 30%. The entire architecture of the Intel Xeon 5400 series processors is built for power savings, and the power consumption per processor has dropped from 130 watts to 50 watts compared to the previous quad-core Xeon 5300 series processors. In addition, the product also uses on-demand power distribution technology, which greatly reduces the idle power consumption of the processor. At the same time, the Xeon 5400 processor is also an ideal platform for running virtualization technology, which can greatly improve the resource utilization of the data center, thus achieving energy conservation. It can provide enterprises with high-performance computing, build a green data center, and achieve an ideal platform for stable and scalable applications such as virtualization operations.
Figure 1 The Xeon 5500 series is currently the latest mainstream product

and the Xeon 5500 series processor is the latest product released in March 2009, which uses the Nehalem-EP architecture, Gainestown core. The most notable feature of the Nehalem architecture is the introduction of the "acceleration mode" technology. "Acceleration Mode" uses Intel's "Integrated Power Gates" technology, which can turn individual cores on or off according to load requirements. In addition to other running cores, the independent cores are reduced to near zero power. In addition, the Xeon 5500 series processors are equipped with an on-chip memory controller and QuickPath point-to-point connection technology, both of which can improve performance by reducing memory read time and faster data paths. //This article transferred from www.45it.com computer software and hardware application network

Overall, Xeon 5500 series processor memory bandwidth is three times that of the previous generation of chip products, 3D performance is also significantly stronger than the previous generation product. With the latest Intel intelligent energy control technology adopted by Nehalem-EP, the Xeon 5500 series processor can achieve 10W minimum power consumption per CPU, which can effectively control the overall power consumption of the server while providing abundant power output for the system. Its processor frequency ranges from 1.86GHz to 3.2GHz. Except for the dual-core design of Xeon E5502, other products adopt quad-core design. The three-level cache has 4MB and 8MB. The "W" series thermal power consumption is about 130W, "X "The series power consumption is around 95W, the "E" is around 80W, and the low-voltage "L" power consumption is around 60W.
Figure 2 The core state of the Xeon 5500 series

Compared with the current mainstream Xeon 5400 series Xeon processor, the new micro-architecture can effectively improve without increasing the main frequency and power consumption. The processor's performance is more energy efficient. From the price point of view, the Xeon 5500 series is basically the same as the 5400 series, which makes the 5500 replacement 5400 series become the mainstream choice of the current server CPU.

Representative products:

Xeon E5405 (reference price 1800 yuan), Xeon E5410 (reference price 2900 yuan), Xeon E5420 (reference price 4400 yuan), Xeon X5450 (Reference price 12,000 yuan); Xeon E5504 (reference price 1500 yuan), Xeon E5520 (reference price 2800 yuan) and so on.

represents the server:

FIG. 3 Dell PowerEdge R610 server

Dell PowerEdge R410 (Xeon E5504 /2GB /146GB) server, the reference price of 13,000 yuan;

Dell PowerEdge R610 (E5504/4G/146G×2/DVD) server, reference price 13300 yuan;

Inspur Yingxin NF5220 (Xeon E5504/3GB/146GB) server, reference price 26000 yuan; Br>

HP Z600 (Xeon E5504/3GB/250GB) server, reference price 11500 yuan;

Dell PowerEdge R710 (E5520/2G/300G/RAID6/DVD) server, reference price 15800 yuan; Br>

Inspur Yingxin NF5220 (Xeon E5520/6GB/3*146GB) server, reference price 31,500 yuan and other products are good mainstream products.

Second, high-end multi-core: 7400 series

Due to the current multi-channel Xeon processor Nehalem-EX of Intel's latest architecture has not been fully listed, so in the multi-channel market In the field of large-scale enterprise computing and server consolidation, the dominant player is the Xeon 7400 series processor. Compared with the previous generation of the Xeon 7300 series processor, the Xeon 7400 processor not only increases the cache capacity (up to 6 cores, each processor is equipped with up to 16MB of shared L3 cache, specifically supported) Data-critical enterprise applications make it easy for each server to handle more transactions, making it faster to interact with data, and its 45nm production process makes it perform better in terms of power consumption.
Figure 4 Six-core Intel Xeon 7400 series server processor

At the same time, the Xeon 7400 series processor also contains a variety of native 6 core products, the new Xeon 7400 processor is fully compatible A generation of 7300 chipsets that support up to 16 processor sockets and up to 256GB of memory to provide up to 96 processor cores of computing power, providing outstanding scalability and ample computing power for enterprise data centers Rich memory resources and good reliability. Its greater expansion space, greater reliability, and greater scalability make it more demanding for large-scale server consolidation and mission-critical virtualization.

But because of the fact that the Xeon 7400 still uses the traditional front-side bus Core micro-architecture, the user is more optimistic about Intel's next-generation multi-core server processor Nehalem-EX (Beckton). The Nehalem-EX processor contains 8 physical cores and supports Hyper-Threading Technology. The L3 cache capacity is up to 24MB, the L2 cache capacity is 2MB, and it has four QPI connection interfaces. In addition, the processor uses the new LGA1567 slot structure. The most striking thing about Nehalem-EX is its memory support. All Nehalem architecture processors have integrated memory controllers, but Nehalem-EX has four memory channel interfaces. By setting external buffer chips, each processor. It can also support up to 16 memories. Under the 4U configuration, Nehalem-EX can directly communicate with the other three processors through three of the four QPI interfaces, and can also form an 8U system, supporting up to 128 threads to run simultaneously.

Not only that, Nehalem-EX also inherits some RAS (reliability, availabilityserviceability) features of Intel's other server processor Itanium, such as machine inspection architecture technology that allows the CPU to report hardware errors to the operating system (Machine Check Architecture: MCA), etc. The data shows that the Nehalem-EX memory bandwidth is 9 times higher than the strong 7400, the performance when running the database program is 2.5 times that of the latter, the integer arithmetic performance is 1.7 times that of the Xeon 7400, and the floating-point performance is Xeon 7400. 2.2 times.

Representative products:

Xeon E7420 (reference price 17600 yuan), Xeon E7430 (reference price 20800 yuan), Xeon E7440 (reference price 29800 yuan), Xeon E7459 (Reference price 34500 yuan), Xeon X7470 (reference price 41500 yuan), Xeon L7445 (reference price 29000 yuan), Xeon L7455 (reference price 41,000 yuan), etc., the above price is only the reference price, if it is the CPU out of HP and other manufacturers The quotation is cheaper than the above price.

represents the server:

FIG. 5 four exemplary server

dawn Tiankuo I840r-H (Xeon MP E7420 /2GB /146GB) server, the reference price 143000 Yuan;

DELL PowerEdge R900 (E7420/2GB/2×146GB) server, reference price 37000 yuan;

Inspur Yingxin NF520D2R (Xeon MP E7420/4GB/146GB*2/HSB*8 ) Server, reference price 86,000 yuan;

HP ProLiant DL580 G5 (487364-AA1) server, reference price 88,000 yuan, etc., optional.