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Server Benchmarking Lone Wolf Bites Intel Again
Ian Lamont writes "Neal Nelson, the engineer who conducts independent server benchmarking, has nipped Intel again by reporting that AMD's Opteron chips 'delivered better power efficiency' than Xeon processors. Intel has discounted the findings, claiming that Nelson's methodology 'ignores performance,' but the company may not be able to ignore Nelson for much longer: the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit company that develops computing benchmarks, is expected to publish a new test suite for comparing server efficiency that Nelson believes will be similar to his own benchmarks that measure server power usage directly from the wall plug."
The other side of that is that lowering the power consumption means lowering the heat generated which means lowering the cooling requirements.
And cooling requires electricity also. So by reducing the power usage of one component, you can save money on your cooling costs, also. It's twice the savings.
OK, I'm intrigued. What kind of fudge do the current efficiency tests consist of? Measuring generated heat with a thermometer?
They used to but now they time how long it takes to toast a marshmallow. Its useful because you can use the melted mallows as thermal paste. Its not as efficient as Arctic Silver 5 but I hear its better than the standard ceramic stuff.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Let's not forget the environmental factor of using less electricity. More electricity means more carbon, and even if it doesn't matter to your company, it matters to other companies that your company will deal with.
"What do AMD have in their design methodologies that Intel don't?"
Digital Equipment Corp's Alpha engineers.
Sorry to beat a dead horse to a pulp but those that know still know.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Except that there is a very small performance difference in the 32bit world and a non-existent performance difference in the 64bit world. The Opteron actually outperforms quite commonly in the 64bit world much like the Athlons do against Core 2 Duo on the desktop side. Intel has an edge on 32bit optimization right now which is why the Core 2 Duo looks so good right now.
Add 4 and 8 sockets and you've got to be joking considering Intel's shared bus. They cores are chocked for memory throughput at that point while the Opterons just perform better and better as they scale. In a 2 socket system they compete very well. In a 4 socket system the Opteron is by far the superior choice both with power consumption and performance especially with 64bit database,email, and web servers.
The original Advanced-Memory-Buffer-based FBDIMMs might be going away next year but Intel has not given up on off-chip memory bridges since they announced plans for AMB2. Instead of having the AMB2 chip on-DIMM, it will be either on multi-DIMM AMB2 risers or on the motherboard.
BTW, AMD also announced plans for off-chip AMB2-like memory bridges with multiple multi-gigabit serial lanes... they called it G3MX: G3 (socket) Memory eXtender.
So, while FBDIMMs may be going away soon, the idea of using external bridges to dump the RAM further away from the CPUs/chipset using serial interfaces is gaining traction - at least in the server space.
It's fairly common for 3rd party data centers to charge based on power consumption. If you want to rent spaces to have a few machines hosted, you can save a bunch of money by building servers that aren't power hogs. Any data center worth hosting at pays very close attention to how much power they have available, so even in the event of power loss, then have an alternate circuit to draw from and/or sufficient emergency generator power.
These tests *did* factor performance into this (well, that's what the tester says. Intel is contesting this claim. You decided who you believe). In fact, those tests draw the same conclusions as folks I know who recently bought Opteron servers.
The Intel chips have great performance per watt *as a chip*. Perhaps even better than AMD does; I've never measured a chip's power usage.
The Intel servers, on the other hand, have worse performance per watt *as a fully loaded server*. Unless you're running the chip without a server, you generally should care about the power draw from the outlet - like these tests did.
The Intel servers seem to have the edge in performance per watt when the server is going nearly unused. However, in my area, usually the CPU is pegged 24/7 (unlike, say, a webserver).
It's good to see the chip wars are still alive and kicking. When the competition is healthy, consumers benefit instead of stockholders.
It depends upon what's important to you. Is power consumption important? AMD wins. Is multiple CPU cores in single servers important? Anything over 4 until recently, and now 8, is an AMD win. Do you need the most processing power possible for a single process in a 2P or less unit? Intel wins that one. Need high density stacked CPUs with loads of RAM? AMD wins that one (That's a power/heat/space issue). Need to process web calls? Sun wins that one hands down on a /$, /kW, and /J measure.
There are definite differences in performance between the various CPUs. A mere 5% difference in power draw across a day times 1000s of CPUs is significant. Same with a 5% thermal dissipation difference, as that turns into increased cooling requirements.
These things all matter in the server world.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
And the percent of Netadmins who have the time, budget, knowledge, and inclination to do so is right about .001%
I agree that Virtualization is a great solution, but the vast majority of IT shops around the world don't have the knowledge or budget to pull it off these days. Give it another 5-10 years and it'll be the new standard, but right now it just doesn't have the market or education penetration. For the cost of investing in a Xen system and training, most IT shops will be financially better off just paying the extra electric bill.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs