Intel Announces Xeon D SoC Line Based On Broadwell Core Architecture 76
MojoKid writes Intel is targeting big core performance and intelligence in a microserver form factor with its new Xeon D family of processors, the company's first ever Xeon-based System-on-Chip (SoC) design. The Xeon D line Intel is announcing today is built on their 14nm process technology and combines the performance and features of its traditional Xeon chips with the size and power savings of an SoC. According to Intel, Xeon D delivers up to 3.4x faster performance node and up to 1.7x better performance per watt compared to the company's Atom C2750. The Xeon D is the third generation of the family and it's actually based on Intel's Broadwell architecture. Intel unveiled two new Xeon D processors today, the D-1540 (8 cores, 16 threads, 2GHz, 45W TDP) and D-1520 (4 cores, 8 threads, 2.2GHz, 45W TDP). These chips have memory controllers capable of addressing up to 128GB. They also feature an integrated platform controller hub (PCH), integrated I/Os, and two integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Again, all of this is based on Intel's Broadwell core CPU architecture, so performance per watt should be strong.
Xeon D? (Score:1)
"Xeon D" sounds too much like "systemd" for my tastes. I don't think I will buy one of these CPUs for that reason alone.
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I was wondering if it'll help me do massively parallel computing AND decongest me.
Thanks, Xeon D.
Want NOW. (Score:1)
Re:Support AMD!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Then write to your politician to not be so corrupt and uphold all of the existing laws. A consumer buying the lesser product just to prevent a monopoly is totally absurd.
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And check out Phoronix's benchmarks on Linux which use the non-rigged GCC compiler.
AMD and Intel do indeed trade blows on the top end and it's much closer than one would expect.
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I buy AMD because of the huge cost/core advantage, flexible upgrade paths, and unlocked parts.
I don't need an anti-monopoly cause to stay away from Intel.
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Didn't AMD management shift off it's manufacturing side, and shake down on its' engineering teams in order to maximize short-term profits? I mean, I will often choose AMD where it's pragmatic, but they're too far behind Intel for server performance/watt considerations.
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No it wasn't to maximize short term profits. It was to prevent them going bankrupt. They basically wasted all their cash reserves, which were saved in order to build their next generation fab at NY, on buying ATI above the stock market price, at the height of the stock market bubble, just before the Great Recession.
As a result they ran out of cash and had to sell their fabs to ATIC from Abu Dhabi. AMD also sold their mobile GPU division to Qualcomm and now they work on Adreno.
I blame Hector Ruiz for that.
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Support AMD : get a Xeon-D motherboard and add an AMD graphics card to it!
I'm pretty excited about this. (Score:3)
It's been interesting watching the beast slowly awaken from ARM poking at it so much. I hope we get some great mobile chips out of this.
Maybe 2015 will be the year of the well hidden don't-hold-it-that-way type heat sinks, along with thicker phones for bigger batteries, so we can actually use these things. Function has to creep back into fashion at some point.
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Already here. Technically, intel's SoCs have been superior to most ARM offerings since the baytrail atoms hit the scene last year. Superior performance-per-watt full-on tablet SoCs.
Most of the first gen baytrail based systems are already going on sale. I picked up a Dell Venue 8 pro for 150 bucks. How's that for a 2GB ram, 32 gig storage tablet.. That runs full windows 8.1. Yeah. Not a tablet OS. It's literally a PC in tablet formfactor. USB charging, long battery life, everything. (Microsoft's really lame
Re:RAID (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding! It's been a real pain trying to find something reasonably priced with ECC and 8 SATA connectors. The whole industry should have moved to ECC by now.
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No kidding! It's been a real pain trying to find something reasonably priced with ECC and 8 SATA connectors. The whole industry should have moved to ECC by now.
If you dont need a lot of CPU power, you can get a MSI AM1I motherboard with the Athlon 5350 cpu and crucial ecc memory part CT51272BD160B (B, not the 'BJ' model). It isn't written on the box that this motherboard and CPU support ECC memory but there are forum threads full of people who built file servers using this combination. Only 6 SATA ports but that is plenty for most people.
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Anything that has a modern LSI chip can probably be flashed to Target Initiator mode. I've gotten PERC and IBM M-series SAS controllers for $80 off ebay. You can add in an SAS expander if you need more than 8 drives.
With that kind of setup, you don't have to depend on motherboard ports and can buy whatever makes the most sense.
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From the summary:
> and two integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports
The article doesn't say that they're integrated, just the summary. Maybe the mac is internal, but the phy (the power hungry part of ethernet) will be a separate chip. There's no way they stuck it in the cpu, 10G phy silicon is huge and heatsinky [google.com].
Who knows if they they included the phy power in the 45 Watts.
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But very interesting is they announce support for 2.5 Gbps ethernet. That's like a little suprise, a workaround to the semi-failure of 10G gaining traction.
It can do 100 meters over CAT5e, from this old pdf http://www.ieee802.org/3/minut... [ieee802.org]
So, if it comes to fruition maybe 2.5 Gb does the trick and it could end up as a desktop/laptop standard (besides cooling, putting a controller on PCIe 1x 2.0 would be a no-brainer)
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Which makes me think it's an Aquantia PHY, since Aquantia and Broadcom are the only ones with known silicon that supports 2.5g, 5g, and 10g. But from Aquantia's current products, they're still at a 28nm process, which makes me think it's not integrated. Mystery company, Intel built a PHY out of nowhere, or Aquantia supports a 14nm process and haven't announced it yet (usually, announcements like that are simultaneous).
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Actually, I'm surprised they don't have 5G in that speed list. Both broadcom and aquantia support 1/2.5/5/10g. And, cat5e can do 5g and 10g in shorter runs, and not many people need 100m. I don't see the point of having 2.5G be the standard for wired when 802.11c can do over that (which is why we need something wired beyond 1G). For a desktop standard, I would rather have a full multi speed 10g chip that gives me the fastest possible with my cable, that gives a speed and reliability benefit over wireless.
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Well according to this Intel powerpoint presentation http://download.intel.com/news... [intel.com] by Killeen Kristine it is integrated.
There is some details on the benchmark methods in the fine print but it isn't throughput that they are testing it is concurr
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As far as I know, nobody has a 10G phy at 14nm at this time. Intels current 10G ethernet PHYs come from Aquantia: http://www.lestina.com/media/p... [lestina.com]
Their current offering is still at 28nm. None of the *very very few* 10G ethernet phy competitors have anything close.
It would have to be a mystery company they were getting this IP from, especially considering the 2.5G Ethernet rate support. Only Aquantia and Broadcom support this right now.
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Note that you can query ark.intel.com to find every chip that supports ECC:
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?ECCMemory=true&MarketSegment=DT
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AMD has their socket AM1 processors which support ECC memory and encryption but lack the built in ethernet which may not be a big loss since the processors and motherboards for them are so inexpensive.
128 GB ought to be enough (Score:3)
Re:128 GB ought to be enough (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-ck101/
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It would be possible but very unlikely. A laptop with dual NIC and a serial port would be fun to some people I'm sure, but you won't find it even though it's trivial to make one. So the chance of seeing a laptop with that server CPU and mandatory external GPU are zero.
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the chance of seeing a laptop with that server CPU and mandatory external GPU are zero.
I could see a workstation-class "laptop" with a 17" or larger display and a Quadro GPU coming with this processor. But I could also see the second network interface only being expressed through a docking station that costs at least half as much as the machine itself.
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If the CPUs are very similar and the machines are "nearly half as fast", I strongly suspect you're comparing a system with an SSD to one without. There's nothing special or magical about Apple's OS or hardware that would otherwise account for that difference.
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It's a "SoC" because the southbridge is integrated - with the northbridge also integrated but regular CPUs have had the northbridge for a while.
USB, SATA and wired ethernet are in there but if you check the article and pictures there's no GPU or wifi!
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USB, SATA and wired ethernet are in there but if you check the article and pictures there's no GPU or wifi!
If I could get something that would be about the size of a half-length card and have a single PCIEx16 slot on a tree, it would be my ideal motherboard. My PC is too big. I just need room for a couple of SSDs internally, and the power supply.
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I would get a low-profile micro-ATX, so I can still have cards in it : at least the sound card and then whatever current or future need.
no hardware dongles / external hardware, roomy for at least one 3.5 HDD and two 2.5HDD.
How about a NUC based on this? (Score:2)
Especially with the dual NICs.
Price (Score:2)
D-1520: $199
D-1540: $581
I know it's twice as many cores, but I wasn't expecting quite that big a jump in price.
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Intel acts weird with the "tray price", on CPUs that only OEMs can get e.g. core i7 4950HQ is officially at $623 but it is speculated the OEM doesn't pay as much.
No beowulf cluster? (Score:3)
Cant wait (Score:2)
This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to see emerge for use in my home lab and NAS - dual 10G means I can finally stop mucking about with all those 1G lines when what I really wanted was an affordable converged net for my lab. Power requirements will keep my hydro bill under control too.
Apps will need a recompile? (Score:2)
I wonder if it is too late for Intel to enter the market, many mobile apps have C++ code that is compiled to ARM instructions and unless intel makes some kind of virtualization layer microops for those instructions any intel mobile device will not run many things built for Android/iOS without a recompile.
If you code everything in Java for Android it will probably run on intel chips, I am not familiar with iOS but I believe that all apps there would need a recompile.
Either intel mobile chips will be stuck in
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Oh wait this seems to be for notebooks and netbooks, not tablets like I originally thhought...
TSX errata corrected (Score:2)
According to http://techreport.com/review/2... [techreport.com] Intel TSX errata has been corrected
This can improve database performance (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/... [anandtech.com] )