I/O bandwidth breakthrough Sun Next Generation Blade server

Sun recently announced the launch of a new generation of http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13737.html "> Blade server Sun Blade 6000 Modular System, This is not only the Sun's first server with Intel processors, but also a further breakthrough in I/O transfer and memory capacity.

Breaks One: I/O transfers up to 142Gbps

The Sun Blade 6000 Modular System is a 10U-high blade server that can hold up to 10 blades, depending on the processor and memory, There are 3 kinds of blade modules, the Sun Blade T6300, AMD Opteron 2000 series processor, and the Sun Blade X6220 with the Intel Xeon processor, respectively, using their own UltraSPARC T1 processor. In the I/O transfer volume, in addition to the use of Intel processor X6250 only up to 110Gbps, the remaining two blade modules I/O transfer capacity up to 142Gbps. The

Blade I/O transfer is currently unable to break through 142Gbps. Taking IBM BladeCenter H and HP's BladeSystem C as an example, the maximum I/O transfer per blade is up to 40Gbps and 84Gbps respectively. Take the Sun T6300 and X6220 blade module For example, each knife has 2 groups 8 times times the number of PCI Express Modules and Receptacle Express Modules, in the transmission of both 64Gbps. In addition, 2 Gigabit Ethernet and 4 SAS transmissions were included, while the I/O transmission was 2 and 12Gbps respectively. Therefore, the above transmission volume will be remitted, each blade I/O transmission can reach 142Gbps.

Sun's I/O module uses industrial standard design, and Sun Systems Engineering Associate Liu Yaven says that the PCI I/O architecture of HP and IBM Blades is the custom specification of each manufacturer, and the benefits of using industrial standard specifications Make the user more advantageous in the subsequent maintenance and cost, also lets the customer be able to install or replace the I/O module faster, without affecting the system operation.

However, HP does not believe that the I/O transfer volume will affect the overall blade performance, says Zhou Xirong, product manager at Hewlett-Packard Industry Standard Server Division, just as a Ferrari on a crowded road, although Ferrari more than 200 kilometers per hour, but the road is jammed, Can not play Ferrari's performance, like a blade server, Blade serviceInternal I/O faster, if the external connection I/O does not support such a high transmission speed, the overall performance is still not as expected.

Break Two: memory capacity up to 64GB

The biggest problem with the blade server is the lack of extensibility. In the memory section, IBM HS21 and HP bl480c, for example, each with 8 and 12 memory slots, with a maximum memory capacity up to 32GB and 48GB.

and Sunblade 6000 Modular System, except that the T6300 Blade module is equipped with only 8 groups of DDR2 400 slots, and the rest, such as X6220 and X6250, can support 16 memory slots. Take the 2-way blade module X6220 as an example, built 16 sets of DDR2 400 memory modules, each memory maximum capacity of 4GB, so that each knife memory capacity up to 64GB. The

Liu Yaven says that Sun's blades are better suited for efficient computing (HPC) markets, where processors grow toward multi-core and multiple threads, processors grow faster, but memory is not matched, and sun enlarges the memory, making the blade server more efficient.

Sun, in addition to increasing the memory space, can accommodate 4 sets of 2.5-inch hard drives per knife, Zhou Xirong said, as Sun improved the performance of each knife, relatively, also make each blade module space wider, Blade 6000 Modular system 10U height, It can only accommodate 10 sets of blade modules, can not play the most basic blade server requirements-increase density and thus save space, as well as buy 10 rack servers, in the cost may be cheaper.