AnandTech 2010 Server Upgrade: The CPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 30, 2010 6:54 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- CPUs
- Intel
With our 2010 server upgrade we're doing more than just replacing hardware, we're moving to a fully virtualized server environment. We're constructing two private clouds, one for our heavy database applications and one for everything else. The point of creating two independent clouds is to equip them with different levels of hardware - more memory/IO for the db cloud and something a bit more reasonable for the main cloud. Within each cloud we're looking to completely duplicate all hardware to make our environment much more manageable.
The first hardware we got in for the upgrade were our CPUs. We're moving from a 28 server setup to a 12 server environment. Each server has two CPU sockets and we're populating them with Intel Xeon L5640s.
The L5640 is a 32nm Westmere processor with 6-cores/12MB L3 per chip. The L indicates a lower voltage part. The L5640 carries a 60W TDP thanks to its 2.26GHz clock speed. We're mostly power constrained in our racks so saving on power is a top priority.
Each server will have two of these chips, that's 12-cores/24-threads per server. We've reviewed Intel's Xeon 5670 as well as the L5640 in particular. As Johan concluded in his review, the L5640 makes sense for us as we have hard power limits at the rack level and are charged extra for overages.
There's not much else to show off at this point but over the coming days/weeks you'll see more documentation from our upgrade process.
Hopefully this will result in better performance for all of you as well as more uptime as we can easily scale hardware within our upcoming cloud infrastructure.
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myfootsmells - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
can't wait to see the progressWill Robinson - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
This stuff WILL in fact run Crysis fully maxed right?AstroGuardian - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
It will probably say: Your machine doesn't meet the minimum requirements for CrysisShloader - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Don't suppose this would be an opportunity for a giveaway? Hell I'd even pay shipping if you're tossing out some Athlon MP chips.johnsonx - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Socket-A Semprons make better Athlon MPs than most Athlon MPs did; you can get your hands on those easily.NICOXIS - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
this will sound like the obvious AMD fanboy question, but why weren't AMD Opteron six core considered? or if they were, why you went for Intel?Just curious
Guessor - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Obvious answer is that Xeons perform better than Opterons.. Less obvious answer is.. well something along the line of "donation".. of some sort? Knowing the deposition of this site.JarredWalton - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I believe the secondary reason is the same reason we're going with the L5640: power requirements. With a hard power cap, you want maximum performance per watt. Right now, Intel is winning in that area, so Xeon makes more sense.redisnidma - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Jarred, you know this is a lie.Socket C32 processors are less power consuming than anything else on the market right now, and it will fit the bill perfectly for Anandtech as a whole, but I guess if you chose this route it will upset your "sponsors", so, I understand the true meaning of this. ;)
Voo - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
What? Amd winning in the Performance/Watt category? Ah yeah and now please the review and how they tested to come to THAT conclusion.I mean come on, at least stay realistic with your claims.