September 28, 2014 at 14:30Intel introduced a new family of server chips
Recently, another creation of Intel was introduced - the Xeon E5-2600 v3 family of chips. According to the developer, the new chips are a way to improve the "outdated" data centers. According to Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager, Intel Data Center Group, the Xeon E5-2600 v3 chips are the fastest server chips ever made by the company.
These microchips are based on the Haswell microarchitecture. The production uses 22-nanometer technology with volumetric Tri-Gate transistors. The architecture provides for up to 18 cores with a maximum frequency of up to 3.7 GHz and a level 3 cache of up to 45 MB. Also, a significant update has been made in the new family - support for DDR4 RAM has been added. DDR4 memory provides a 40 percent increase in bandwidth while reducing power consumption by 35 percent. New correction algorithms provide higher reliability in data processing, which reduces the number of errors compared to DDR3.
There is also built-in support for the NVMe protocol, thanks to which SSDs can be placed in faster PCI-Express slots. Servers equipped with such chips will support solid state drives (SSD) up to 2TB. The management and cooling of servers will also be simplified. According to the manufacturer, Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors have the best energy efficiency indicators in the world (performance per unit of energy consumption).
The expansion of the Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel AVX2) instruction set has significantly increased performance on integer operations. In addition, the Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (Intel AES-NI) instruction set has been improved, allowing faster encryption and decryption operations.
In the new microcircuits, the throughput is increased, which approximately halves the latency. Grantley (codename of the Xeon E5-2600 v3 family of chips), among other things, supports 40 Gbps Ethernet. The novelty will replace the Xeon E5-2600 v2 chips, codenamed Romley, which in the new fiscal quarter accounted for more than 80 percent of all server chips supplied by Intel. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, IBM, Huawei and other companies have already announced the release of servers based on new Intel chips.
Speaking about the new chips, it is worth noting that Intel has done what is just good of its kind, but positions it as the best. The most significant technological change is the addition of cores and support for DDR4 memory. Everything else was built around this.
To illustrate, you can parse an excerpt from the release: "up to 18 cores with a maximum frequency of up to 3.7GHz and a cache of the 3rd level up to 45 Mb." The word “do” is worthy of special attention, since in the price list, such a number of cores and cache memory is presented in a single chip - Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3, which is announced but not available for order, and the declared frequency of 3.7GHz is generally nowhere current price does not appear. The maximum available for order at the moment is 14 cores, which is not bad. We hope that this is due to the debugging processes of the new chips, and all the announced features will eventually become available to a wide range of consumers, but the light aftertaste of marketing bullshit still remains.
It is very pleasing that progress does not stand still, and companies are improving their development, but this progress is more like a marketing game in order to get more profit. Instead of the long-awaited release to the masses of a family of microcircuits based on 14-nm technology, which is all being postponed, the company publishes more and more “warming” press releases and finalizes old products with a file, adding small buns and serious margins. And we just have to wait for a true technological breakthrough and be content with what we have.
These microchips are based on the Haswell microarchitecture. The production uses 22-nanometer technology with volumetric Tri-Gate transistors. The architecture provides for up to 18 cores with a maximum frequency of up to 3.7 GHz and a level 3 cache of up to 45 MB. Also, a significant update has been made in the new family - support for DDR4 RAM has been added. DDR4 memory provides a 40 percent increase in bandwidth while reducing power consumption by 35 percent. New correction algorithms provide higher reliability in data processing, which reduces the number of errors compared to DDR3.
There is also built-in support for the NVMe protocol, thanks to which SSDs can be placed in faster PCI-Express slots. Servers equipped with such chips will support solid state drives (SSD) up to 2TB. The management and cooling of servers will also be simplified. According to the manufacturer, Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors have the best energy efficiency indicators in the world (performance per unit of energy consumption).
The expansion of the Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel AVX2) instruction set has significantly increased performance on integer operations. In addition, the Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (Intel AES-NI) instruction set has been improved, allowing faster encryption and decryption operations.
In the new microcircuits, the throughput is increased, which approximately halves the latency. Grantley (codename of the Xeon E5-2600 v3 family of chips), among other things, supports 40 Gbps Ethernet. The novelty will replace the Xeon E5-2600 v2 chips, codenamed Romley, which in the new fiscal quarter accounted for more than 80 percent of all server chips supplied by Intel. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, IBM, Huawei and other companies have already announced the release of servers based on new Intel chips.
Speaking about the new chips, it is worth noting that Intel has done what is just good of its kind, but positions it as the best. The most significant technological change is the addition of cores and support for DDR4 memory. Everything else was built around this.
To illustrate, you can parse an excerpt from the release: "up to 18 cores with a maximum frequency of up to 3.7GHz and a cache of the 3rd level up to 45 Mb." The word “do” is worthy of special attention, since in the price list, such a number of cores and cache memory is presented in a single chip - Intel Xeon Processor E5-2699 v3, which is announced but not available for order, and the declared frequency of 3.7GHz is generally nowhere current price does not appear. The maximum available for order at the moment is 14 cores, which is not bad. We hope that this is due to the debugging processes of the new chips, and all the announced features will eventually become available to a wide range of consumers, but the light aftertaste of marketing bullshit still remains.
It is very pleasing that progress does not stand still, and companies are improving their development, but this progress is more like a marketing game in order to get more profit. Instead of the long-awaited release to the masses of a family of microcircuits based on 14-nm technology, which is all being postponed, the company publishes more and more “warming” press releases and finalizes old products with a file, adding small buns and serious margins. And we just have to wait for a true technological breakthrough and be content with what we have.