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8-Core Dual Xeon "V8" Test Rig Performance
MojoKid writes "Back in January at this year's CES show, Intel was giving the press glimpses
of a rig in their booth dubbed the
V8. It was essentially a dual-socket workstation platform outfitted
with a pair of quad-core Xeon processors for a total of eight cores — hence the
"V8". The enterprise platform that this box was built around is based on Intel's
5000X chipset, aka Blackford, and it supports up to 32GB of FBDIMM serial
memory. HotHardware has
a component build-up of a more current Intel V8 machine here, with
preliminary benchmarks, pictures and more details on this 8-core dual Xeon
powerhouse."
Imagine a beowolf clu-
oh, sod it.
Living With a Nerd
This machine is obviously not designed for gaming. 8 Cores sound to me like a big number crunching machine for simulations and the like.
But then, who knows? Maybe the SME market might put some pressure on Dell and HP, pointing at the Mac while doing it. (I know, I know... but seriously - rEFIt for booting, a solid Linux distro like CentOS, and a couple of PCI-X cards, and you've got a full on server for most small/medium biz needs. Chuck in AppleCare for (most) warranty stuff, and a small business can do the same computing horsepower for a whole hell of a lot less than they otherwise could afford, IIRC).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sounds a lot like a high-end Mac Pro (shipping for months) with a nicer graphics card. Dell Precision 690s are a bit pricier, but they do the same thing (admittedly, I envy the SAS built-in). I assume HP has a similar model, but I didn't check.
How is this news? Intel attached a marketing name to a product that has existed for months and is the logical extension of having dual-socket boards and quad-core chips. I mean, it's basically (2*2)*2 - dual-core processors (2) on MCM (*2) in a two-socket (*2) board. There's exactly no advancement going on here.
Fubar already. Anyone have a coral cache link?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Well, who really takes a "wait for barcelona" quote from a guy who uses the word GamEing"? The idea that he compared it to a gaming machine shows exactly how much he really knows about server processors in general.
This will be a pretty decent step for servers, not just because of speed, but the drop in heat compared to it's predecessors with the same amount of running processors. I'm sure that AMD will have something to throw in soon, but it really doesn't matter considering quite a few companies are bias to what manufacturer they use. Most stick with a brand, regardless of price, when they know it is reliable. It's also not a surprise that this was released. I'm sure that a V16 isn't too far down the line within a year or two.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Actually to me it looks like a high end workstation, so having as much GPU power as possible is probably a good idea. I imagine 8 cores and dual Quadro FX 5600's would make one hell of a CAD station =)
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Intel is trying to sell the V8 as a gaming system.
All that, the bag of chips, and a glass of lemonade and I STILL can't run Oblivion with max settings and get a decent FPS...
One step closer to running Vista! Baby steps.
Except the shared bus the Xeons sit on is a seriously limiting factor, no-one in HPC is using Xeons because of it.
A better bet would be a Sun Fire X4600 type of machine, 8 dual-core Opterons and 128GB of memory in a 4U server chassis.
This is well known, and having played with one, it's a very nice machine. Unlike its 24TB cousin ...
As always with this type of hardware, just bring money. No big deal, right?
anyone using windows for a server that does enough work to require 8 cores and piles of RAM isn't worth their MCSE salary
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Thing is, no one really cares, its not even meant to be a gaming PC.
Blackford has two separate FSBs. One for each quad core. Now, the quad core shares the bus among the two converged cores, but I think you meant something else.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Well, kinda affordable. Been out of the loop since new expenses have frozen my multi-CPU fetish at a dual Athlon MP. Nice to know that when I get some cash I can still put together a multi-chip system without paying $2000 for a mobo.
Blar.
I bet apple could give they systems away for free and you PC Nicks will still find a way to show that macs are more expensive then PCs
It's the TCO, man! The purchase price hardly matter! Everyone knows that....
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Well, Dell will only ship Server 2003 with their server products, and that is a $800 expense.
I think that XP should be able to support an 8 core, dual socket setup, though. XP is limited to two sockets, but should be able to support at least 8 cores, I think.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Sweet, I've looking for a PC just for Email and Web Browsing. Thank you Intel
You shouldn't be surprised how many cycle hungry programs require Windows (or in some cases, require Windows if you want to make use of all of your hardware). We bought the above mentioned monster machine for Opnet, which will gladly eat every single cycle on any machine when you start running larger simulations.
I read the internet for the articles.
You all got a hemi in that Rig?
To be honest, your web browsing experience might be a bit dissapointing on this system if you plan to run Windows Vista. Email works like a charm though!
c++;
It can, XP's licensing works the same way, up to two sockets. It doesn't count actual cores, just sockets. This is how you can get dual core/HT to work with HP home. I haven't ever personally ran xp with 8 procs, but I have seen it with 4, I would think it would also support 8, so long as it was across a max of 2 sockets.
Technophile
*slaps forehead* I could have had a V8!
As I found a HPC guy on Slashdot , how does IBM P5 series compare to those Xeons or Opterons?
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ibm/
Not that I will go out and buy them, I heard here (/.) that IBM Power processors dominate the HPC market because of their uncomparable specs.
...the silicon space heater! This sucker can probably heat a room.
It has been a while since I've heard anything about the Itanic. About a year back, Microsoft, Intel and HP had been talking about serious long term plans for the high-end Itanium, while AMD64 will be mostly among the mid-range offerings.
But looking at the way the Core architecture processors are scaling (in number of cores), where does that leave the Itanium? If the future is n^x core processors and parallelism, the Itanium is really dead.
Long live the Itanic!
Life is a conviction.
I don't dispute that... I'm sure now that ATi is owned by AMD we will see nVidia and Intel getting much friendlier than they have been.
Over all it is an exiting time to be a tech head... competition is great.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Nobody really needs a V8 on their workstation. Maybe you can connect to a shared computing grid to do the actual CPU-intensive task. But while you are playing Solitaire, entering parameters for the CPU-intensive task and so on, well you are wasting electricity for no good reason. Hopefully they at least reuse the heat for cooking or something.
I just checked their page, and they also offer either no OS installed, or Suse Linux installed.
There's a huge difference between an A/C whining and someone's personal opinion (or even, in this case, a fact!) Have you even tried Vista yet? I'm right with the parent on this one, it's become a gigantic trade-off between security and functionality, and unfortunately for Microsoft they've leaned a little too close to the former this time.
That's not to say they won't find a balance eventually (or really just go back to XP!), and it's certainly not a flame, just a comment...
Except the shared bus the Xeons sit on is a seriously limiting factor, no-one in HPC is using Xeons because of it.
UT-Austin's current supercomputer isn't in the top ten right now, but "no-one" is a little harsh for number 12, don't you think?
I'm not saying that memory bandwidth isn't an important bottleneck (and I'd bet that's one reason they're going with AMD for TACC's next cluster), but depending on your application's behavior you can bring in enough work to keep two dual-core Xeons busy on each node, and I'm sure there are applications that won't starve two quad-core Xeons either.
just two short years ago, what was considered "for computations and CAD only" is now considered "Dell"
Is it just me, or is this like having a 6 bladed razor. Next they will be telling us they are adding an aloe strip on the spacebar!
7 cores in the front and 1 in the back for really precise computing!
Um, the left banner add, from XFX the well endowed Girl in the Green Latex top
I have a XFX 7900 card I like, but that add makes me feel funny
Especially if you choose your algorithms wisely, when you can. Tiling matrix algorithms for various operations, for example, can greatly reduce your memory bandwidth requirements over naive algorithms.
I didn't mean to imply nothing can use that much power. Just imagine how many Exchange and IIS servers are going to be installed on those things though.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
"Gameing" I can kind of forgive, but I can't overlook the statement of ddr3 having less "lag" than FB-DIMMs. Surely, he means latency, but latency isn't the end-all, be-all of memory benchmarks. Plus, if you only have one socket, even AMD's quad core chip only has one memory bus off the chip. It's only when you get into multiple socket configurations does AMD's architecture really show.
Sorry, I meant DDR2 in the above post... been spending too much time dorking with video cards the last couple days.
Tell that to our DL585's and DL585g2's with four dual core Opterons and 32GB of ram running Oracle 10g r2. I run an S&P 500 company on Windows 2003 with a smattering of Linux. We could run Oracle RAC on linux but the cost for equivalent performance in Oracle licenses would have been a LOT more than the Windows Enterprise license.
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I didn't mean to imply nothing can use that much power. Just imagine how many Exchange and IIS servers are going to be installed on those things though.
Depending on workload, exchange can be cpu-intensive. Although, according to microsoft, exchange won't work well with more than 8 cores.
Sql server can be very cpu-intensive, and scales well to multiple cores.
why run Oracle on windows? Especially for important corporate data linux has better reliability and security. Can you be certain that a worm won't get through your firewall and bring down the network AND the database servers?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
So what? Personally, I intended to make Dual-Quad-Core my new server standard, the price delta (maybe 25% of a complete redundant system) versus performance delta (figure 50% at a minimum) makes it compelling. While I wouldn't run Exchange in a VMware image, certainly I have lots of apps I can to make use of the available power.
I agree with you. We all know that both chips and different chipsets have numerous pros and cons. I think that the recent competition will more than likely plateau brand switches, in comparison to the past few years when AMD showed it's tail lights.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Shouldn't it be VV8? Cause last time I checked the quad cores were actually dual dual cores.
Kind of old news. A friend of mine built one of these using the 1.6 ghz
h p?hostid=3131492
chips and is using it for doing all kinds of things but is currently using
it to run Seti @ Home.
Here's his url:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.p
DUH....This is a server system. One should note however that the Blackford chipset is dismal at memory performance. We are using Connroe processors becuase of this. The XEON requires the Blackford chipset with horible memory throughput. Why Intel insists on this piece of crap is beyond me.
Athiesm is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
No.
It's technically a "Flat Eight" or a "Boxer" since the chips and their many cores are all arranged on the same plane. If it was a V8, then the chips and their cores would be stacked on the mother board and tilted at a 45 degree angle.
Although if they can arrange the sockets just so and make the heatsinks look like pistons, I might be willing to accept the V8 name.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
When one of the high-tech fanboy aerodynamics researchers around here (a university town) buys one, it will be entertaining to remind him that my $2000 Sun E10000 is still faster.
They make dimm sockets in some machines (usually 1U servers) at angles...
I had an old server there there were 2 CPUs mounted at a V-shaped angle, so effectively a V2.
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Oracle is inherently less secure on windows than unix...
On unix, Oracle runs under it's own account, whereas on windows it runs as SYSTEM. Thus, any vulnerability in oracle will get you user level access to a unix system, but will get you complete system access to windows.
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Except the shared bus the Xeons sit on is a seriously limiting factor, no-one in HPC is using Xeons because of it.
Thats funny, because according to the current Nov 2006 Top 500 Supercomputer list, there are about 220 Xeon systems (EM64T and IA32) on it.
I guess nobody told all those HPC professionals that nobody is using Xeons...
Oh, yeah, I didn't make that too clear. Sorry. I meant to say something like: they only offer Server 2003 out of the MS product line, and seem to not support desktop OSs.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
would be to build your own. I just built one using a nice asus dual xeon mobo, 8800gts vid card, and a single xeon 1.86ghz for about 1800$. Adding the second xeon would bump it up to 2300$. That's with only 2g ram and a 400g hd. I have a feeling the mac won't be priced anywhere close to that. I didn't get the second xeon because it seems like the quad is overkill for most apps, although I'm interested in parallelism and would like the second processor when prices come down. Another possibility would be the xilinx FPGA that goes in the extra xeon socket.
Uh, my Oracle doesn't run as system, it runs as its own account....
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
just two short years ago, what was considered "for computations and CAD only" is now considered "Dell"
Yep, that's how my 486/25 was marketed too. I mean 1024x768 - nobody needs that except architects!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Good call. My apologies.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I have my 8-Core Quad Xeon 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 8GB of ram and four (300GB/sec) 500-GB hard drives striped. I can tell you it is the machine of my dreams. I am in multi-core heaven dreaming about parallel software algorithms and how to apply this horsepower to real world problems. I just decided that I was unwilling to throw any more hardware money at Windows. The Mac Pro is sweet. Booting in a few seconds was only the first joy. I have no doubt that this machine is capable of great things. I look forward to the Leopard release when it occurs, but Tiger is a fine operating system for the time being. I recently purchased the Quad Mac Pro, and returned it on the last day to upgrade to 8-core. I am so glad I did. I would have been kicking myself for quite some time. I reviewed various vendors' offerings of workstation class equipment, and even Sun's 25 Year Anniversary Sale had nothing to top this machine. Dual 1.8 GHz Sparc IIIis with 4GB or Ram didn't stand up. I have four 2GB ram strips with four empty slots available. When the day actually comes that I need more memory, I can go to 16GB. Beyond all that, the Mac Pro is a maintenance delight with the pull out hard drive drawers. After my recent debacle with Dell, dealing with Apple was a no brainer. I did buy Apple Care because the machine cost real money and I want assurance of problem resolution. No doubt about it, this machine is a "Workstation". When 16-cores come around, I don't think I will pine for that because for me, 8-cores is enough headroom for development. If my clients need 16 for production, cool!
It doesn't perform very well on data intensive applications. It seems like the front end bus is locking and performance drops after the fourth thread gets running. On computational intensive calculations I get the performance I would expect.
I've never seen oracle running on windows under it's own account...
Even if you create an account for it, all the services get started as SYSTEM. Did you have to jump through hoops to make it run as a normal user?
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Two dual cores have been available from Apple for a long time. Currently their cheapest (2GHz, four cores) is at $2,200. They recently brought out their two quad core machines, which can be had for $3997 (3GHz, 8 cores).
So, yes I think the mac is a a reasonably good price/performance comparison.
Uh, you change the account the service is started as, it's not hard. We did it for security and so that Oracle jobs could write to UNC resources. There were some local rights on the box that needed to be granted, but they are standard stuff for service accounts.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.