Quick Take: Nehalem/Istanbul Comparison at AnandTech

Johan De Gelas and crew present an interesting comparison of Dunnington, Shanghai, Istanbul and Nehalem in a new post at AnandTech this week. In the test line-up are the “top bin” parts from Intel and AMD in 4-core and 6-core incarnations:

• Intel Nehalem-EP Xeon, X5570 2.93GHz, 4-core, 8-thread
• Intel “Dunnington” Xeon, X7460, 2.66GHz, 6-core, 6-thread
• AMD “Shanghai” Opteron 2389/8389, 2.9GHz, 4-core, 4-thread
• AMD “Istanbul” Opteron 2435/8435, 2.6GHz, 6-core, 6-thread

Most importantly for virtualization systems architects is how the vCPU scheduling affects “measured” performance. The telling piece comes from the difference in comparison results where vCPU scheduling is equalized:

AnandTech's Quad Sockets v. Dual Sockets Comparison. Oct 6, 2009.

When comparing the results, De Gelas hits on the I/O factor which chiefly separates VMmark from vAPUS:

The result is that VMmark with its huge number of VMs per server (up to 102 VMs!) places a lot of stress on the I/O systems. The reason for the Intel Xeon X5570’s crushing VMmark results cannot be explained by the processor architecture alone. One possible explanation may be that the VMDq (multiple queues and offloading of the virtual switch to the hardware) implementation of the Intel NICs is better than the Broadcom NICs that are typically found in the AMD based servers.

Johan De Gelas, AnandTech, Oct 2009

This is yet another issue that VMware architects struggle with in complex deployments. The latency in “Dunnington” is a huge contributor to its downfall and why the Penryn architecture was a dead-end. Combined with 8 additional threads in the 2P form factor, Nehalem delivers twice the number of hardware execution contexts than Shanghai, resulting in significant efficiencies for Nehalem where small working data sets are involved.

When larger sets are used – as in vAPUS – the Istanbul’s additional cores allows it to close the gap to within the clock speed difference of Nehalem (about 12%). In contrast to VMmark which implies a 3:2 advantage to Nehalem, the vAPUS results suggest a closer performance gap in more aggressive virtualization use cases.

SOLORI’s Take: We differ with De Gelas on the reduction in vAPUS’ data set to accommodate the “cheaper” memory build of the Nehalem system. While this offers some advantages in testing, it also diminishes one of Opteron’s greatest strengths: access to cheap and abundant memory. Here we have the testing conundrum: fit the test around the competitors or the competitors around the test. The former approach presents a bias on the “pure performance” aspect of the competitors, while the latter is more typical of use-case testing.

We do not construe this issue as intentional bias on AnandTech’s part, however it is another vector to consider in the evaluation of the results. De Gelas delivers a report worth reading in its entirety, and we view this as a primer to the issues that will define the first half of 2010.

Quick Take: Magny-Cours Spotted, Pushed to 3GHz for wPrime

Andreas Galistel at NordicHardware posted an article showing a system running a pair of engineering samples of the Magny-Cours processor running at 3.0GHz. Undoubtedly these images were culled from a report “leaked” on XtremeSystems forums showing a “DINAR2” motherboard with SR5690 chipset – in single and dual processor installation – running Magny-Cours at the more typical pre-release speed of 1.7GHz.

We know that Magny-Cours is essentially a MCM of Istanbul delivered in the rectangular socket G34 package. One thing illuminating about the two posts is the reported “reduction” in L3 cache from 12MB (6MB x 2 in MCM) to 10MB (2 x 5MB in MCM). Where did the additional cache go? That ‘s easy: since a 2P Magny-Cours installation is essentially a 4P Istanbul configuration, these processors have the new HT Assist feature enabled – giving 1MB of cache from each chip in the MCM to HT Assist.

“wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x²-k, where k is the number we’re sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)²=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.”

– wPrime site

Another thing intriguing about the XtremeSystems post in particular is the reported wPrime 32M and 1024M completion times. Compared to the hyper-threading-enabled 2P Xeon W5590 (130W TDP) running wPrime 32M at 3.33GHz (3.6GHz turbo)  in 3.950 seconds, the 2P 3.0GHz Magny-Cours completed wPrime 32M in an unofficial 3.539 seconds – about 10% quicker while running a 10% slower clock. From the myopic lens of this result, it would appear AMD’s choice of “real cores” versus hyper-threading delivers its punch.

SOLORI’s Take: As a “reality check” we can compared the reigning quad-socked, quad-core Opteron 8393 SE result in wPrime 32M and wPrime 1024M at 3.90 and 89.52  seconds, respectively. Adjusted for clock and core count versus its Shanghai cousin, the Magny-Cours engineering samples – at 3.54 and 75.77 seconds, respectively – turned-in times about 10% slower than our calculus predicted. While still “record breaking” for 2P systems, we expected the Magny-Cours/Istanbul cores to out-perform Shanghai clock-per-clock – even at this stage of the game.

Due to the multi-threaded nature of the wPrime benchmark, it is likely that the HT Assist feature – enabled in a 2P Magny-Cours system by default – is the cause of the discrepancy. By reducing the available L3 cache by 1MB per die – 4MB of L3 cache total – HT Assist actually could be creating a slow-down. However, there are several things to remember here:

• These are engineering samples qualified for 1.7GHz operation
• Speed enhancements were performed with tools not yet adapted to Magny-Cours
• The author indicated a lack of control over AMD’s Cool ‘n Quiet technology which could have made “as tested” core clocks somewhat lower than what CPUz reported (at least during the extended tests)
• It is speculated that AMD will release Magny-Cours at 2.2GHz (top bin) upon release, making the 2.6+ GHz results non-typical
• The BIOS and related dependencies are likely still being “baked”

Looking at the more “typical” engineering sample speed tests posted on the XtremeSystems’ forum tracks with the 3.0GHz overclock results at a more “typical” clock speed of 2.6GHz for 2P Magny-Cours: 3.947 seconds and 79.625 seconds for wPrime 32M and 1024M, respectively. Even at that speed, the 24-core system is on par with the 2P Nehalem system clocked nearly a GHz faster. Oddly, Intel reports the W5590  as not supporting “turbo” or hyper-threading although it is clear that Intel’s marketing is incorrect based on actual testing.

Assuming Magny-Cours improves slightly on its way to market, we already know how 24-core Istanbul stacks-up against 16-thread Nehalem in VMmark and what that means for Nehalem-EP. This partly explains the marketing shift as Intel tries to position Nehalep-EP as a destined for workstations instead of servers. Whether or not you consider this move a prelude to the ensuing Nehalem-EX v. Magny-Cours combat to come or an attempt to keep Intel’s server chip power average down by eliminating the 130W+ parts from the “server” list,  Intel and AMD will each attempt win the war before the first shot is fired. Either way, we see nothing that disrupts the price-performance and power-performance comparison models that dominate the server markets.

[Ed: The 10% difference is likely due to the fact that the author was unable to get “more than one core” clocked at 3.0GHz. Likewise, he was uncertain that all cores were reliably clocking at 2.6GHz for the longer wPrime tests. Again, this engineering sample was designed to run at 1.7GHz and was not likely “hand picked” to run at much higher clocks. He speculated that some form of dynamic core clocking linked to temperature was affecting clock stability – perhaps due to some AMD-P tweaks in Magny-Cours.]

Quick Take: HP’s Sets Another 48-core VMmark Milestone

Not satisfied with a landmark VMmark score that crossed the 30 tile mark for the first time, HP’s performance team went back to the benches two weeks later and took another swing at the performance crown. Well, the effort paid off, and HP significantly out-paced their two-week-old record with a score of 53.73@35 tiles in the heavy weight, 48-core category.

Using the same 8-processor HP ProLiant DL785 G6 platform as in the previous run – complete with 2.8GHz AMD Opteron 8439 SE 6-core chips and 256GB DDR2/667 – the new score comes with significant performance bumps in the javaserver, mailserver and database results achieved by the same system configuration as the previous attempt – including the same ESX 4.0 version (164009). So what changed to add an additional 5 tiles to the team’s run? It would appear that someone was unsatisfied with the storage configuration on the mailserver run.

Given that the tile ratio of the previous run ran about 6% higher than its 24-core counterpart, there may have been a small indication that untapped capacity was available. According to the run notes, the only reported changes to the test configuration – aside from the addition of the 5 LUNs and 5 clients needed to support the 5 additional tiles – was a notation indicating that the “data drive and backup drive for all mailserver VMs” we repartitioned using AutoPart v1.6.

The change in performance numbers effectively reduces the virtualization cost of the system by 15% to about $257/VM – closing-in on its 24-core sibling to within $10/VM and stretching-out its lead over “Dunnington” rivals to about $85/VM. While virtualization is not the primary application for 8P systems, this demonstrates that 48-core virtualization is definitely viable.

SOLORI’s Take: HP’s performance team has done a great job tuning its flagship AMD platform, demonstrating that platform performance is not just related to hertz or core-count but requires balanced tuning and performance all around. This improvement in system tuning demonstrates an 18% increase in incremental scalability – approaching within 3% of the 12-core to 24-core scaling factor, making it actually a viable consideration in the virtualization use case.

In recent discussions with AMD about the SR5690 chipset applications for Socket-F, AMD re-iterated that the mainstream focus for SR5690 has been Magny-Cours and the Q1/2010 launch. Given the close relationship between Istanbul and Magny-Cours – detailed nicely by Charlie Demerjian at Semi-Accurate – the bar is clearly fixed for 2P and 4P virtualization systems designed around these chips. Extrapolating from the similarities and improvements to I/O and memory bandwidth, we expect to  see 2P VMmarks besting 32@23 and 4P scores over 54@39 from HP, AMD and Magny-Cours.

SOLORI’s 2nd Take: Intel has been plugging away with its Nehalem-EX for 8-way systems and – delivering 128-threads – promises to deliver some insane VMmarks. Assuming Intel’s EX scales as efficiently as AMD’s new Opterons have, extrapolations indicate performance for the 4P, 64-thread Nehalem-EX shoud fall between 41@29 and 44@31 given the current crop of speed and performance bins. Using the same methods, our calculus predicts an 8P, 128-thread EX system should deliver scores between 64@45 and 74@52.

With EX expected to clock at 2.66GHz with 140W TDP and AMD’s MCM-based Magny-Cours doing well to hit 130W ACP in the same speed bins, CIO’s balancing power and performance considerations will need to break-out the spreadsheets to determine the winners here. With both systems running 4-channel DDR3, there will be no power or price advantage given on either side to memory differences: relative price-performance and power consumption of the CPU’s will be major factors. Assuming our extrapolations are correct, we’re looking at a slight edge to AMD in performance-per-watt in the 2P segment, and a significant advantage in the 4P segment.

Quick Take: HP Plants the Flag with 48-core VMmark Milestones

Following on the heels of last month we predicted that HP could easily claim the VMmark summit with its DL785 G6 using AMD’s Istanbul processors:

If AMD’s Istanbul scales to 8-socket at least as efficiently as Dunnington, we should be seeing some 48-core results in the 43.8@30 tile range in the next month or so from HP’s 785 G6 with 8-AMD 8439 SE processors. You might ask: what virtualization applications scale to 48-cores when $/VM is doubled at the same time? We don’t have that answer, and judging by Intel and AMD’s scale-by-hub designs coming in 2010, that market will need to be created at the OEM level.

Well, HP didn’t make us wait too long. Today, the PC maker cleared two significant VMmark milestones: crossing the 30 tile barrier in a single system (180 VMs) and exceeding the 40 mark on VMmark score. With a score of 47.77@30 tiles, the HP DL785 G6 – powered by 8 AMD Istanbul 8439 SE processors and 256GB of DDR2/667 memory – set the bar well beyond the competition and does so with better performance than we expected – most likely due to AMD’s “HT assist” technology increasing its scalability.

Not available until September 14, 2009, the HP DL785 G6 is a pricey competitor. We estimate – based on today’s processor and memory prices – that a system as well appointed as the VMmark-configured version (additional NICs, HBA, etc) will run at least $54,000 or around $300/VM (about $60/VM higher than the 24-core contender and about $35/VM lower than HP’s Dunnnigton “equivalent”).

SOLORI’s Take: While the September timing of the release might imply a G6 with AMD’s SR5690 and IOMMU, we’re doubtful that the timing is anything but a coincidence: even though such a pairing would enable PCIe 2.0 and highly effective 10Gbps solutions. The modular design of the DL785 series – with its ability to scale from 4P to 8P in the same system – mitigates the economic realities of the dwindling 8P segment, and HP has delivered the pinnacle of performance for this technology.

We are also impressed with HP’s performance team and their ability to scale Shanghai to Istanbul with relative efficiency. Moving from DL785 G5 quad-core to DL785 G6 six-core was an almost perfect linear increase in capacity (95% of theoretical increase from 32-core to 48-core) while performance-per-tile increased by 6%. This further demonstrates the “home run” AMD has hit with Istanbul and underscores the excellent value proposition of Socket-F systems over the last several years.

Unfortunately, while they demonstrate a 91% scaling efficiency from 12-core to 24-core, HP and Istanbul have only achieved a 75% incremental scaling efficiency from 24-cores to 48-cores. When looking at tile-per-core scaling using the 8-core, 2P system as a baseline (1:1 tile-to-core ratio), 2P, 4P and 8P Istanbul deliver 91%, 83% and 62.5% efficiencies overall, respectively. However, compared to the %58 and 50% tile-to-core efficiencies of Dunnington 4P and 8P, respectively, Istanbul clearly dominates the 4P and 8P performance and price-performance landscape in 2009.

In today’s age of virtualization-driven scale-out, SOLORI’s calculus indicates that multi-socket solutions that deliver a tile-to-core ratio of less than 75% will not succeed (economically) in the virtualization use case in 2010, regardless of socket count. That said – even at a 2:3 tile-to-core ratio – the 8P, 48-core Istanbul will likely reign supreme as the VMmark heavy-weight champion of 2009.

SOLORI’s 2nd Take: HP and AMD’s achievements with this Istanbul system should be recognized before we usher-in the next wave of technology like Magny-Cours and Socket G34. While the DL785 G6 is not a game changer, its footnote in computing history may well be as a preview of what we can expect to see out of Magny-Cours in 2H/2010. If 12-core, 4P system price shrinks with the socket count we could be looking at a $150/VM price-point for a 4P system: now that would be a serious game changer.

NEC Adds Top 48-Core, Dell Challenges 24-Core in VMmark Race

NEC’s venerable Express5800/A1160 tops the 48-core VMmark category today with a score of 34.05@24 tiles to wrest the title away from IBM who established the category back in June, 2009. NEC’s new “Dunnington” X7460 Xeon-based score represents a performance per tile ratio of 1.41 and a tile to core efficiency of 50% using 128GB of ECC DDR2 RAM.

Compared to the leading 24-core “Dunnington” results – held by IBM’s x3850 M2 at 20.41@14 tiles – the NEC benchmark sets a scalability factor of 85.7% when moving from 4-socket to 8-socket systems. Both servers from NEC and IBM are scalable systems allowing for multiple chassis to be interconnected to achieve greater CPU-per-system numbers – each scaling in 4-CPU increments – ostensibly for OLTP advantages. The NEC starts at around $70K for 128GB and 48-cores resulting in a $486/VM cost to VMmark.

Also released today, Dell’s PowerEdge R905 – with 24 2.8GHz Istanbul cores (8439 SE) and 128GB of ECC DDR2 RAM – secures the number two slot in the 24-category with a posting of 29.51@20 tiles. This represents a tile ratio of 1.475 and tile efficiency of 83.3% for the $29K rack server from Dell at about $240/VM. Compared to its 12-core counterpart, this represents a 91% scalability factor.

If AMD’s Istanbul scales to 8-socket at least as efficiently as Dunnington, we should be seeing some 48-core results in the 43.8@30 tile range in the next month or so from HP’s 785 G6 with 8-AMD 8439 SE processors. You might ask: what virtualization applications scale to 48-cores when $/VM is doubled at the same time? We don’t have that answer, and judging by Intel and AMD’s scale-by-hub designs coming in 2010, that market will need to be created at the OEM level.

Based on the performance we’re seeing in 8-socket systems relative to 4-socket and the upcoming “massively mult-core” processors in 2010, the law of diminishing returns seems to favor the 4-socket system as the limit for anything but massive OLTP workloads. Even then, we expect to see 48-core in a “4-way” box more efficient than the same number of cores in an 8-way box. The choice in virtualization will continue to be workload biased, with 2P systems offering the best “small footprint” $/VM solution and 4P systems offering the best “large footprint” $/VM solution.

Quick Take: AMD Releases SE/HE Six-Cores

Today AMD published pricing for 5 new Istanbul SKUs – two designated as 105W APC high-performance SE and three as 55W APC low-power HE models.

In the SE category, the 2439SE and 8439SE at 2.8GHz replace the top-bin 2435/8435 Istanbul which occupies the 2.6GHz, 75W APC bin. Besides the clock frequency changes, maximum CPU temp is reduced from 76C to 71C. As with all other Istanbul’s so far, these are HT3 bus parts running at 4.8GT/s. Price per socket has been announced at $1,019 and $2,649 for the 2439SE and 8439SE, respectively.

While the new SE parts do little to help the Opteron surpass the X5560 in raw performance, they fit well into the price-performance picture for AMD so long as street prices for the X5560 continue to hover in the $1,200-1,300 range.

SPECint_rate2006 - AMD Istanbul SE SKU's

In the HE category, the 2425HE/8425HE and 2423HE are new clock speed bins running at 2.1GHz and 2.0GHz, respectively. These parts maintain the same 76C maximum CPU temp as the normal 75W ACP parts, but are selected to consume just 55W ACP. Again, these SKU’s also carry the 4.8GT/s HT3 bus of their Istanbul brethren. Pricing per socket has been announced at $523 and $1,514 for the 2425HE and 8425HE, respectively, with the 2423 HE targeted at $455 each.

SPECint_rate2006 - AMD Istanbul HE SKU's

Here, AMD’s lower power target and pricing help the chip maker do some profit-taking as the price-performance of the HE parts appear to offer a measurable advantage over the L5506 (60W TDP) which is circling the $475 region (street price). See AMD’s official press release about High Energy Efficiency and the Processing Power of Six-Cores for more details.

SOLORI’s Take: AMD has expanded the Istanbul line with both high-performance and low-power SKU’s as promised. With DDR3 prices inching downward, AMD’s price-performance position is eroding slowly as Q3/2009 approaches. However, the 2-to-1 price penalty for top-bin Xeon/Nehalem platforms will take a lot more time to overcome, leaving the AMD the solid choice for budget conscious virtualization.

What’s perhaps more exciting for AMD followers – especially in the good-enough performance market – is sitting in the HE bin. The HE shows weakness in the 2P space, however, against the 2.26GHz L5520 part from Intel which sports 8 thread per CPU and can burst core speeds in excess of 3GHz with its “turbo” feature. This places the 2P 2425 HE somewhere in-between L5506 and L5520 in performance-per-watt, with 2425 HE maintaining a reasonable price-performance advantage.

In the unchallenged 4P space, the 8425 HE, at 2.1GHz and $1,580 (est. street price) offers nearly 3:2 power savings over the standard part offering 24-cores at a little over 200W ACP (4P configurations). This savings will help scale-out clouds both private and public.

SPECfp_rate2006 (SE SKU)

SPECint_rate2006 (SE SKU)

SPECfp_rate2006 (HE SKU)

SPECint_rate2006 (HE SKU)

(Note: SPEC CPU results gathered from published tables at http://spec.org.)

Updated 7/15/2009:  Added link to AMD’s press release.

Tyan S8212 Spotted

Tyan S8212 Istanbul SR5690+SP5100 Motherboard

Thanks to a tweet from @ErikBussink and the quick thinking of Charlie Demerjian at SemiAccurate we’ve been treated to a picture of the upcoming Tyan S8212 (2-way) based on AMD’s new line-up of motherboard chip sets. While we see a x16 and 3 x8 PCIe slots, 6 SATA and 8 SAS ports, there is (conspicuously) no 10GE LOM – just 1GE.

What this board does deliver is HT3.0 and IOMMU support for Opteron/Istanbul and that’s a good thing for virtualization. We know from earlier discussions with AMD that Istanbul needs the SR5890 SR5690 to unlock its hidden potential. Two internal USB ports cry-out for flash booting options…

AMD Istanbul and Intel Nehalem-EP: Street Prices

It’s been three weeks after the official launch of AMD’s 6-core Istanbul processor and we wanted to take a look at prevailing street prices for the DIY upgrade option.

Istanbul Pricing (Street)

AMD “Istanbul” Opteron™ Processor Family
2400 Series	Price	8400 Series	Price
2.6GHz Six-Core, 6-Thread AMD Opteron 2435 (75W ACP)	$1060.77	2.6GHz Six-Core, 6-Thread AMD Opteron 8435 (75W ACP)	$2,842.14
2.4GHz Six-Core, 6-Thread AMD Opteron 2431 (75W ACP)	$743.74 $699.00	2.4GHz Six-Core, 6-Thread AMD Opteron 8431 (75W ACP)	$2,305.70
2.2GHx Six-Core, 6-Thread AMD Opteron 2427 (75W ACP)	$483.82 $499.99

Nehalem-EP/EX Pricing (Street)

After almost two months on the market, the Nehalem has been on the street long enough to see a 1-3% drop in prices. How does Istanbul stack-up against the Nehalem-EP/Xeon pricing?

Intel “Nehalem” Xeon Processor Family
EP Series	Price	EX Series	Price
2.66GHz Quad-Core, 8-Thread Intel Xeon EP X5550 (95W TDP)	$999.95 $999.99	Quad-Core, 8-Thread Intel Xeon EX	TDB
2.4GHz Quad-Core, 8-Thread Intel Xeon EP E5530 (80W TDP)	$548.66 $549.99	Quad-Core, 8-Thread Intel Xeon EX	TBD
2.26GHz Quad-Core, 8-Thread Intel Xeon EP E5520 (80W TDP)	$400.15 $379.99
2.26GHz Quad-Core, 8-Thread Intel Xeon EP L5520 (60W TDP)	$558.77 $559.99

Compared to the competing Nehalem SKU’s, the Istanbul is fetching a premium price. This is likely due to the what AMD perceives to be the broader market that Istanbul is capable of serving (and its relative newness relative to demand, et al). Of course, there are no Xeon Nehalem-EX SKU’s in supply to compare against Istanbul in the 4P and 8P segments, but in 2P, it appears Istanbul is running 6% higher at the top bin SKU and 27% higher at the lower bin SKU – with the exception of the 60W TDP part, upon which Intel demands a 13% premium over the 2.2GHz Istanbul part.

This last SKU is the “green datacenter” battleground part. Since the higher priced 2.6GHz Istanbul rates a 15W (ACP) premium over the L5520, it will be interesting to see if system integrators will compare it to the low-power Xeon in power-performance implementations. Comparing SPECpower_ssj2008 between similarly configured Xeon L5520 and X5570, the performance-per-watt is within 2% for relatively anemic, dual-channel 8GB memory configurations.

In a virtualization system, this memory configuration would jump from an unusable 8GB to at least 48GB, increasing average power consumption by another 45-55W and dropping the performance-per-watt ratio by about 25%. Looking at the relative performance-per-watt of the Nehalem-EP as compared to the Istanbul in TechReport’s findings earlier this month, one could extrapolate that the virtualization performance-per-watt for Istanbul is very competitive – even with the lower-power Xeon – in large memory configurations. We’ll have to wait for similar SPECpower_ssj2008 in 4P configurations to know for sure.

System Memory Pricing (Street)

System memory represents 15-20% of system pricing – more in very large memory foot prints. We’ve indicated that Istanbul’s time-to-market strategy shows a clear advantage (CAPEX) in memory pricing alone – more than compensating for the slight premium in CPU pricing.

System Memory Pricing
DDR2 Series (1.8V)	Price	DDR3 Series (1.5V)	Price
4GB 800MHz DDR2 ECC Reg with Parity CL6 DIMM Dual Rank, x4 (5.4W)	$100.00	4GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC Reg w/Parity CL9 DIMM Dual Rank, x4 w/Therm Sen (3.96W)	$138.00
4GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC Reg with Parity CL5 DIMM Dual Rank, x4 (5.94W)	$80.00	4GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC Reg w/Parity CL7 DIMM Dual Rank, x4 w/Therm Sen (5.09W)	$132.00
8GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC Reg with Parity CL5 DIMM Dual Rank, x4 (7.236W)	$396.00	8GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC Reg w/Parity CL7 DIMM Dual Rank, x4 w/Therm Sen (6.36W)	$1035.00

These parts show a 28%, 40% and 62% premium price for DDR3 components versus DDR2 which indicates Istanbul’s savings window is still wide-open. Since DDR3 prices are not expected to fall until Q3 at the earliest, this cost differential is expected to influence “private cloud” virtualization systems more strongly. However, with the 0.3V lower voltage requirement on the DDR3 modules, Nehalem-EP actually has a slight adavantage from a operational power perspective in dual-channel configurations. When using tripple-channel for the same memory footprint, Nehalem-EP’s memory consumes about 58% more power (4x8GB vs. 9x4GB).

First 12-core VMmark for Istanbul Appears

VMware has posted the VMmark score for the first Istanbul-based system and it’s from HP: the ProLiant DL385 G6. While it’s not at the top of the VMmark chart at 15.54@11 tiles (technically it is at the top of the 12-core benchmark list), it still shows a compelling price-performance picture.

Comparing Istanbul’s VMmark Scores

For comparison’s sake, we’ve chosen the HP DL385 G5 and HP DL380 G6 as they were configured for their VMmark tests. In the case of the ProLiant DL380 G6, we could only configure the X5560 and not the X5570 as tested so the price is actually LOWER on the DL380 G6 than the “as tested” configuration. Likewise, we chose the PC-6400 (DDR2/667, 8x8GB) memory for the DL 385 G5 versus the more expensive PC-5300 (533) memory as configured in 2008.

As configured for pricing, each system comes with processor, memory, 2-SATA drives and VMware Infrastructure Standard for 2-processors. Note that in testing, additional NIC’s, HBA, and storage are configured and such additions are not included herein. We have omitted these additional equipment features as they would be common to a deployment set and have no real influence on relative pricing.

Systems as Configured for Pricing Comparison

System	Processor	Speed	Cores	Threads	Memory	Speed	Street
HP ProLiant DL385 G5	Opteron 2384	2.7	8	8	64	667	$10,877.00
HP ProLiant DL385 G6	Opteron 2435	2.6	12	12	64	667	$11,378.00
HP ProLiant DL380 G6	Xeon X5560*	2.93	8	16	96	1066	$30,741.00

Here’s some good news: 50% more cores for only 5% more (sound like an economic stimulus?) The comparison Nehalem-EP is nearly 3x the Istanbul system in price.

Server Watch: Istanbul, G34, C32, Itanium and Nehalem-EX

Istanbul is launching in June, 2009 and will be a precursor to the G34 and C32 platforms to come in Q1/2010. To that end, AMD will be providing an overview of its next generation of Direct Connect Architecture, or DCA 2.0, which which separates Socket-F systems from G34/C32. This overview will be available as a live webcast on June 1, 2009 at 11:00AM Central Time. In advance of the announcement, AMD has (silently) reduced prices for its Opteron processors across the board. This move will place additional pressure on Intel’s Nehalem-EP systems already weakened (virtualization) price-performance.

We expect to hear more news about Istanbul’s availability in keeping with Tyan’s upcoming announcement next week. Based on current technology and economic trends, Istanbul and G34 could offer AMD a solid one-two punch to counter Intel’s relentless “tick-tock” pace. With Nehalem servers sales weak despite early expectations and compounding economic pressures, market timing may be more ideally suited for AMD’s products than Intel’s for a change. As Gartner puts it, “the timing of Nehalem is a bit off, and it probably won’t make much of an impact this year.”

In the meantime, Phil Hughes at AMD has a posted a personal reflection on Opteron’s initial launch, starting with the IBM e325 in 2003, and ending with Opteron’s impact on the Intel Itanium market by year-end (while resisting a reference to “the sinking of the Itanic“). Phil acknowledges Sun’s influence on Opteron and links to some news articles from 2003. See his full post, “The Sun Also Rises,” here… As 64-bit processors go, 2003 was much more the year of the Opteron rather than “the year of the Itanium” (as predicted by Intel’s Paul Otellini.)

Speaking of Itanium, TechWorld has an article outlining how Intel’s upcoming Nehalem-EX – with the addition of MCA technology derived from Itanium – could bring an end to the beleagered proprietary platform. TechWorld cites Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood as saying the new Xeon will finally break Intel’s policy of artificially crippling of the x86 processor which has prevented Xeon from being competitive with Itanium. The 8-core, SMT-enabled EX processor was being demonstrated by IBM in an 8-socket configuration.