IDF: Intel Announces Upcoming Haswell and Ivy Bridge-E Xeon Processors

Subject: General Tech | April 10, 2013 - 04:14 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: xeon-ex, xeon-ep, xeon, server, Intel, HPC, haswell

Intel officially announced its next-generation Xeon processors at IDF Beijing today. The new lineup includes the Haswell-based Xeon E3 1200 V3 family on the low end, and the Ivy Bridge-EP Xeon E5 and Ivy Bridge-EX Xeon E7 aimed at the mid-range general purpose and high-end HPC markets respectively. Intel did not disclose pricing or details on the new chips (such as core counts, cache, clockspeeds, number of SKUs etc.). However, the x86 chip giant did state that the new chips are coming later this year as well as teasing a few tidbits of information on the new Xeon chips.

The upcoming Xeon E3 processors will be part of the Xeon E3 1200 V3 family. These chips will be based on Haswell and are limited to one socket per board. Thanks to the Haswell architecture, Intel has managed to reduce power consumption by approximately 25% and increase video transcoding performance by about 25%. There will be at least one Xeon E3 1200 V3 series chip with a 13W TDP, for example.

Intel is also releasing a new media software development kit (SDK) for Linux and Windows machines that will provide a common platform for developers. It has allowed Intel to maximize the use of both the CPU and GPU for HD video transcoding as well as increasing the number of simultaneous video transcodes over previous generations. The new Xeon E3 1200 V3 (Haswell) chips will be available sometime before the end of 2013.

The next-generation Xeon E5 chips will be based on the 22nm Ivy Bridge-EP architecture. They will be positioned at general purpose computing in data centers (and possibly high-end workstations), and will be limited to 2 sockets per motherboard. The new Xeon E5 processors will incorporate Intel Secure Key and OS Guard technologies. OS Guard is the evolution of the company's existing Intel Execute Disable Bit security technology. Intel is also including AES-NI (AES-New Instructions), to improve the hardware acceleration of AES encrypt/decrypt operations. These mid-range Xeon chips will be available in Q3 2013.

Finally, the top-end Xeon E7 processors will be based on the 22nm Ivy Bridge-EX architecture. The upcoming processors are intended for high performance server and supercomputing applications where scalability and performance are important. The Ivy Bride-EX chips are compatible with motherboards that will have between 4 and 8 sockets and up to 12TB of RAM per node. Further, Intel has packed these processors with new RAS features, including Resilient System Technology and Resilient Memory Technology. The RAS features ensure stability and data integrity in calculations are maintained. Such features are important in scientific, real-time analytics, cloud computing, and banking applications, where performance and up-time are paramount and any errors could cost a company money. Intel has stated that the new Xeon E7 CPUs will be available in the fourth quarter of this year (Q4'13).

While I was hoping for more details as far as core count, clockspeeds, and pricing, the approximate release to market timeframe for the chips is known. Do you think you will be upgrading to the new Xeon chips later this year, or are your current processors fast enough for your server applications?

More information on the upcoming Xeon chips can be found in this Intel fact sheet (PDF).

SeaMicro's new servers might have Intel Inside but the rest is all AMD

Subject: General Tech | September 11, 2012 - 01:47 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: seamicro, amd, Intel, xeon, piledriver, smug

To think that only 3 years ago we finally saw the end of the legal battle between Intel and AMD over the x86 patent makes today's news bring a smile to those with a certain sense of humour.  Some of SeaMicro's new servers will be powered by Intel's Xeon line of processors, meaning that an AMD owned company will be offering Intel Inside.  As AMD purchased SeaMicro for their "Freedom" 3D mesh/torus interconnect technology as opposed to an attempt to push Intel out of that particular make of server, this move makes perfect sense as AMD's bottom line will benefit from every sale of an Intel based SeaMicro server.  It also opens up the choices available to the market as you will be able to purchase Piledriver based SeaMicro servers using the same interconnect technology.

From The Register we get more information on the Piledriver processors we will see in these servers, they will have eight cores and would come in three speeds; 2GHz, 2.3GHz, and 2.8GHz.  They also infer that with this design you could have 512 cores and 4TB of memory in a 10U chassis which is enough to make any SETI@Home or Folding@Home team member drool with jealousy.  On the Intel side they will use the 2.5GHz quad core Xeon E3-1265L v2  which means you would only have a mere 256 cores in a similar 10U chassis.  DigiTimes also picked up on this story with more details on the insides of the servers, both Intel and AMD.

"SeaMicro is not longer an independent company, but you would not have guessed that if you were dropped in from outer space to attend the launch of the new SM15000 microserver in San Francisco on Monday afternoon. Advanced Micro Devices may own SeaMicro, but the company went out of its way to support the latest "Ivy Bridge" Xeon E3-1200 v2 processor from rival Intel as well as its own forthcoming "Piledriver" Opteron processor as new compute nodes in a new SeaMicro chassis."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Intel hints at weaving network fabric into Xeons, Atoms @ The Register
• Microsoft to open 32 pop-up retail stores for the holidays @ The Register
• NETGEAR N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit ADSL 2+ Modem Router Review @ HardwareHeaven
• Samsung will seek to ban Apple's Iphone 5 @ The Inquirer
• A preview of the reviews for the iPhone 5 @ The Tech Report

Fee PHI fo fum; Intel changes the smell of a Pentium

Subject: General Tech | September 5, 2012 - 03:49 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Xeon Phi, xeon, larrabee, knights corner, Intel, hot chips

The Register is back with more information from Hot Chips about Intel's Xeon Phi coprocessor, which seems to be much more than just a GPU in drag.  Inside the shell you will find at least 50 cores and at least 8GB of GDDR5 graphics, wwith the cores being very heavily modified 22-nanometer Tri-Gate process Pentium P54C chips clocked somewhere between 1.2-1.6GHz.  There is a brand new Vector Processing Unit which processes 512-bit SIMD instructions and sports an Extended Math Unit to handle calculations with hardware not software.  Read on for more details about the high-speed ring interconnects that allow these chips to communicate among themselves and with the Xeon server it will be a part of.

"Intel has been showing off the performance of the "Knights Corner" x86-based coprocessor for so long that it's easy to forget that it is not yet a product you can actually buy. Back in June, Knights Corner was branded as the "Xeon Phi", making it clear that Phi was a Xeon coprocessor even if it does not bear a lot of resemblance to the Xeon processors at the heart of the vast majority of the world's servers."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Intel announces two software development suites @ The Inquirer
• Samsung Windows 8 notebook remarkably similar to Asustek Taichi @ DigiTimes
• ZTE plans for 11in 2560x1600 tablet @ The Inquirer
• Acer to launch Windows Phone 8 smartphone in 2013 @ The Register
• Belkin 7-port USB 2.0 Hub F5U307-BRN Review @ PCSTATS
• BIOSTAR Joint Contest @ NikKTech

A lot of little Phi coprocessors lightens the load

Subject: General Tech | August 31, 2012 - 02:43 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Intel, xeon, Xeon Phi, hot chips, larrabee

The Xeon Phi is not Larrabee but it does give a chance to remind people that Intel did at one time swear we would be seeing huge results from a lot of strung together Pentium chips.  Nor is Many Integrated Cores the same as AMD's Magny-cours, although you can be forgiven if that thought popped into your head.  Instead the Xeon Phi is a co-processor that will have 50 or more 512-bit SIMD architecture based processors, each with 512KB of Level 2 cache.  These cores are comparatively slow on their own but have been designed to spread tasks over dozens of cores for parallel processing to make up for the lack of individual power.  Intel sees Phi as a way to create HPC servers which will be physically smaller than one based solely on traditional Xeon based servers as well as being more efficient.  There is still a lot more we need to learn about these chips; until then you can check out The Inquirer's article on Intel's answer to NVIDIA and AMD's HPC cards.

"CHIPMAKER Intel revealed some architectural details of its upcoming Xeon Phi accelerator at the Hotchips conference, saying that the chip will feature 512-bit SIMD units."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• IFA: Asus Taichi notebook tablet video demo @ The Inquirer
• TSMC to see revenues decline in August-September @ DigiTimes
• Microsoft fails to pacify PC vendors about Surface table @ DigiTimes
• Super-critical Java zero-day exploits TWO bugs @ The Register
• Guru3D Rig of the Month - August 2012
• AMD Pushes Steamroller and Excavator Forward, Bullish about Performance Increases @ VR-Zone
• Applied Micro's X-Gene server chip ARMed to the teeth @ The Register
• Camera Lens Buying Guide @ TechARP
• Win a Fractal Design Define R4 Case for Free! @ Hardware Secrets

Sandy Bridge Xeons galore! Seventeen new E5s arrive

Subject: General Tech | May 15, 2012 - 02:17 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: xeon, xeon e5, Sandy Bridge E, Sandy Bridge EN, Sandy Bridge EP, lga 1356, lga 2011

Today marks the arrival of the Xeon E3-1200 single socket processor with 17 more models coming soon for two, four, or even eight socket motherboards, though according to The Inquirer Intel has no plans to scale to 16 sockets.  They come in a bewildering array of models including the Sandy Bridge E we are used to, Sandy Bridge EN which uses LGA 1356 and is intended for dual CPU motherboards as it only has one QPI and the LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge EP which scales higher thanks to dual QPI.  No triple QPI but that may still be in store to reduce the number of hops in an 8+ socket board to 2 when used in symmetric multiprocessing in the future.

The E5-2400 (SB-EP) has eight cores and is targeted straight at AMD's lower price, lower power consumption chips as well as offering a noticeable improvement over the already launched E3s.  The E5-2600 family with its dual QPI is more suited for high powered applications that need several powerful processors working in tandem but not to the levels that the E7 series provides.  By offering such a wide variety of choices, especially a family of what for Intel are very low cost processors they are really putting a lot of pressure on AMD and the soon to be released Piledriver family.

"If you were planning on buying new servers in the coming weeks and months, Intel just gave you a whole lot of homework. And if you work at Advanced Micro Devices, you're getting some homework, too."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Adobe backs down, patches critical Photoshop CS5 hole @ The Register
• Intel Sandy Bridge Is Shinier On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS @ Phoronix
• Getting around in Windows 8 @ Windows Team Blog
• Ask the Experts: Heterogeneous and GPU Compute with AMD’s Manju Hegde @ AnandTech
• Nvidia launches Nsight CUDA dev tools into Eclipse @ The Register
• Testing 10GbE Performance: QNAP TS-879 Pro & Synology DS3612xs NAS @ TechSpot

For your enjoyment; a little dual Xeon action

Subject: Systems | April 10, 2012 - 02:48 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: asus, Z9 PE-D8 WS, E5-2660, E5-2687W, xeon

The ASUS Z9 PE-D8 WorkStation motherboard is a great platform for those looking to run two LGA2011 Xeon processors, as well as support for up to four GPUs from either NVIDIA or AMD.  As it is a PCIe 3.0 board, you can run two cards at a full 16x, with four cards they would all run at 8x speeds.  Overclock3D tried two different pairs of octocore Xeons, the 3.1GHz E5-2687W and the 2.2GHz E5-2660 to compare the effect of the base clock speeds on performance.  The faster machine is a F@H monster, running over 100,000 PPD, though in other tests it did not out pace the competition by such a wide margin.  That is especially true for gaming tests, where you seem to be better off with a highly overclocked i7-3960X.

"What would happen if you combined the power of the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS and two of the latest Xeon processors? We find out."

Here are some more Systems articles from around the web:

Systems

• Asus ET2700INKS Review @ TechReviewSource
• TechSpot PC Buying Guide - Just Updated!
• OCUK Titan 8500i Vortex @ Kitguru
• Lenovo IdeaCentre Q180 Review @ TechReviewSource
• Lenovo C325 Review @ TechReviewSource
• Alienware Aurora R4 @ Kitguru
• Foxconn Nano PC nT-i1500 Barebone Review @ Madshrimps

Intel Announces New Xeon Processor to Power the Cloud

Subject: Processors | March 6, 2012 - 02:26 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: xeon E5-2600, xeon e5, xeon, Sandy Bridge E, lga2011, Intel

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 6, 2012 – Addressing the incredible growth of data traffic in the cloud, Intel Corporation announced the record-breaking Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family. These new processors deliver leadership performance, best data center performance per watt, breakthrough I/O innovation and trusted hardware security features to enable IT to scale. These processors are not only at the heart of servers and workstations, but will also power the next generation of storage and communication systems from leading vendors around the world.

Forecasts call for 15 billion connected devices and over 3 billion connected users by 2015. The amount of global data center IP traffic is forecasted to grow by 33 percent annually through 2015, surpassing 4.8 zetabytes per year, more than 3 times the amount in 2011. At these levels, each connected user will generate more than 4GB of data traffic every day – the equivalent of a 4-hour HD movie. This will increase the amount of data that needs to be stored by almost 50 percent per year. ­ In order to scale to meet this growth, the worldwide number of cloud servers is expected to more than triple by 2015.

“The growth in cloud computing and connected devices is transforming the way businesses benefit from IT products and services,” said Diane Bryant, Intel vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group. “For businesses to capitalize on these innovations, the industry must address unprecedented demand for efficient, secure and high-performing datacenter infrastructure. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family is designed to address these challenges by offering unparalleled, balanced performance across compute, storage and network, while reducing operating costs.” The key requirements to enable IT to scale are performance, energy efficiency, I/O bandwidth and security. With the best combination of performance, built-in capabilities and cost-effectiveness, the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product families are designed to address these requirements, and become the heart of the next-generation data center powering servers, storage and communication systems.

Leadership Performance with Best Data Center Performance per Watt
Supporting up to eight cores per processor and up to 768GB of system memory, the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family increases performance by up to 80 percent, compared to the previous-generation Intel Xeon processor 5600 series. The family also supports Intel Advanced Vector Extension (Intel AVX) that increases the performance on compute-intensive applications such as financial analysis, media content creation and high performance computing up to 2 times.

Additional built-in technologies such as Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel Virtualization Technology provide IT with flexible capabilities to increase the performance of their infrastructure dynamically. These performance advances have led the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family to capture 1510 new dual socket x86 world records.

Modern data centers must improve the raw performance they deliver, but also do so efficiently by reducing power consumption and operating costs. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family continue Intel’s focus on reducing total cost of ownership by improving energy efficient performance more than 50 percent as measured by SPECpower_ssj 2008 compared to the previous generation Intel Xeon processor 5600 series. These processors offer support for tools to monitor and control power usage such as Intel Node Manager and Intel Data Center Manager, which provide accurate, real-time power and thermal data to system management consoles. In addition, Intel’s leadership performance allows IT managers to meet their growing demands while optimizing software license and capital costs.

I/O Innovation and Network Capabilities
With the unprecedented growth in data traffic it is essential that systems not only improve computational abilities, but also enable data to flow faster to support data-hungry applications and increase the bandwidth within the data center. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family meets these needs with Intel Integrated I/O (Intel IIO) and Intel Data Direct I/O (Intel DDIO). Intel DDIO allows Intel Ethernet controllers and adapters to route I/O traffic directly to processor cache, reducing trips to system memory reducing power consumption and I/O latency. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family is also the first server processors to integrate the I/O controller supporting PCI Express 3.0 directly into the microprocessor. This integration reduces latency up to 30 percent11 compared to prior generations and with PCI Express 3.0 can up to triple the movement of data into and out of the processor.

The high-performance processing power along with Intel Integrated I/O and advanced storage features such as PCIe non-transparent bridging and asynchronous DRAM refresh, makes the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family also an ideal choice for storage and communications solutions.

Increasing bandwidth demands driven by server virtualization and data and storage network consolidation have led to strong growth in 10 Gigabit Ethernet deployments, with adapter port shipments exceeding 1 million units in each quarter of 2011. Today’s announcement of the Intel Ethernet Controller X540 demonstrates Intel’s commitment to driving 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the mainstream by reducing implementation costs. This industry-first single-chip 10GBASE-T solution is designed for low-cost, low-power LAN on motherboard (LOM) and includes flexible I/O Virtualization and Unified networking support at no additional cost.

Trusted Security
The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family reaffirms Intel’s commitment to providing a more secure hardware foundation for today’s data centers. Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instruction (Intel AES-NI14) helps systems to quickly encrypt and decrypt data running over a range of applications and transactions. Intel Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT15) creates a trusted foundation to reduce the infrastructure exposure to malicious attacks. These features in partnership with leading software applications will help IT protect their data centers against attack and scale to meet the demands of their customers.

Extensive Industry Support
Starting today, system manufacturers from around the world are expected to announce hundreds of Intel Xeon processor E5 family-based platforms. These manufacturers include Acer, Appro, Asus, Bull, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, Lenovo, NEC, Oracle, Quanta, SGI, Sugon, Supermicro and Unisys.