NEW YORK & SAN FRANCISCO – Intel never sounded quite so bullish when it
was promising to recapture the performance crown as it did today, when it proclaimed
to have done just that.
As expected, Intel unveiled its latest Xeon processor, the dual-core
“Woodcrest,” at simultaneous media events today in New York and San Francisco. The new 5100 series Xeon is Intel’s first server chip based on its more energy-efficient Core microarchitecture.
“We’re back,” crowed Tom Kilroy, vice president, Digital Enterprise for Intel.
“We now have undeniable leadership in performance and performance-per-watt
and unique platform level differentiation.”
AMD will make a less dramatic upgrade to its Opteron
line later this summer, but argues it has the steadier, more upgradeable
platform. Intel disputes that notion.
“[AMD’s] introducing a new socket, that changes their platform,” Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, told internetnews.com. “We’re launching a new platform and we’re not apologizing for that. It will be several lifetimes and years long. There is socket compatibility with it for six different processors.”
One performance advantage for AMD has been its use of an on-chip, direct connect memory architecture versus Intel’s approach of extra cache. But Intel thinks it has matched, if not eclipsed, any disadvantage.
Woodcrest features improved I/O acceleration for moving data that Gelsinger said is key to enabling Web services or the so-called Web 2.0 era of computing.
“With efficient handling of the I/O workload, we’ve seen a 50 percent
reduction in CPU
Intel said it knows of 200 workstation and server announcements in
support of Woodcrest. The company expects the 5100 family to be the fastest
ramping product in its history. Pricing runs from $209 to $851 in
quantities of at least a thousand. “We’ve priced Woodcrest for volume right
away, not at the high end,” Boyd David, Intel’s general manager of server
platforms, told internetnews.com.
In addition to the major server manufacturers, IBM, Dell, HP, etc., Intel
had several blue chip companies on hand to further bolster it case.
“Woodcrest’s performance is stunning,” said Greg Brandeau, vice president of
technology at movie animation studio Pixar.
Intel said it seeded the market with about a thousand white box Woodcrest
systems to get feedback, including from Pixar. With the high processing demands
of feature length animation, Brandeau said Pixar often runs at one hundred
percent server utilization when rendering a movie and was faced with having
to build a new data center to accommodate its growing server needs.
For example, he said Pixar’s latest movie, Cars, required three times the
compute power of the older Toy Story. “Not to make the movie any faster,
it’s all about making it look better.”
Brandeau said the 2.6 GHz Xeon 5100s will fit in 37 percent of the space
of the current older, single-core Xeons and yet, draw half the power. “We
can get 2.2 times the compute power in the same space,” said Brandeau,
“because dual-core gives us denser computing.”
Another customer, BMW, said it will invest in Woodcrest to better empower
its technicians worldwide. One example, an interface to tablet PCs will give
the automaker quick access to technical documents and the ability to
reprogram software on the spot.
Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds said Intel at a minimum has slowed AMD’s
momentum and will likely recover some of its lost market share. AMD has
about 22 percent of the server market for x86 chips, according to analyst’s
estimates.
“Intel shows these great benchmarks of how they’ve improved performance,
but what they don’t say is how badly they’d fallen behind,” Reynolds told
internetnews.com.
Sun Microsystems said its Opteron-based servers
maintain a strong edge for its customer base. “Opteron has stronger floating
point performance than Woodcrest and thus is the best solution for
high-performance technical and scientific applications,” said Andy
Bechtolesheim, strategic officer at Sun, in an email sent to
internetnews.com.
Still, Woodcrest’s impressive performance was enough to convince
struggling Silicon Graphics, already in Intel’s camp, to branch beyond its
previous Itanium-only focus. The Mountain View, Calif. company unveiled a
new line of cluster solutions based on the Xeon 5100.
Erin Joyce contributed to this article.
