Eight server in the future a few big points

Server

With the advent of the AMD Opteron processor, the 8-way server based on the x86 architecture has greatly reduced the OEM's entry threshold. On the eve of the advent of the dual-core server processor, both the old 8-way server vendors withdrew and more new players were involved. Already the weather of the 8-way server market, the future will bring to users what new ideas?

In the traditional x 8 6 server design, the multi-channel server is the SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) design, its design difficulty and the number of processors increased exponentially. That is why, in addition to IBM, HP and other server manufacturers with strong experience in system design, it is difficult for other vendors to launch 8-way servers. Therefore, the 8-way server is also considered to be the most x86 market to reflect the manufacturer's technical capabilities, system design capabilities of the "crown jewel." Earlier, the Esever x440 server based on the IBM Exa series chipset and HP's ProLiant server, based on the F8 series of chipsets, accounted for almost the entire 8-way server market in China. It should be noted that IBM and HP's 8-way servers are all using Intel's Xeon MP processor.

Now, however, this situation has changed. First, Sun, which had only supported the SPARC architecture, has now put down its posture, forming a close alliance with AMD and decided to launch a 8-way server based on the Opteron processor later this year. Li Zhiwen, Sun's Greater China market manager, said that Sun's 8-way Opteron server would have a good performance-price ratio in the market after its launch.

Not only that, because AMD's Opteron processor uses a direct-attached architecture, eliminating the need for system vendors to design the North Bridge chip, which makes the threshold to enter the 8-way server has been greatly reduced, Shuguang has launched its first Opteron processor based on the 8-way server. These changes indicate that the 8-way server market has entered the era of dual-core competition (Xeon MP and Opteron), multiple OEM strove (IBM, Sun, Dawn). The 8-Way server market has set off new waves.

8-Way server but a year ago, it was time to integrate the concept. At the time, many analysts had made the point that "because of the need for consolidation, future data centers only need two types of servers." One is a large RISC server or an itanium® server, and the other is a blade server. The former is used to run large databases, ERP and virtualization applications, while the latter is used for the integration of foreground applications. "It is worth mentioning that, due to the space limitations of the blade server, the maximum can only support 4 road." Obviously, in this view, there is no 8-way x86 server.

This view is most consistent with Dell's view--because Dell claims that the 8-way x86 server is an obsolete product, and that users choose such products only to be locked by a specific vendor, increasing system costs. Dell has even given a third party data to prove its point: according to the survey, the 8-way server market is decreasing at a rate of 60% a year. As a result, Dell firmly believes that horizontal scaling (that is, multiple servers forming clusters) is more capable of system performance than vertical scaling (that is, increasing the number of processors in one server) for server products.

IBM, which has been insisting on investing in the 8-way x86 server market, clearly disagreed. IBM's technology spokesman dismissed Dell's claim as a very figurative metaphor: "A 8-ton truck is clearly not equivalent to 8 trucks with 1 tonnes of load." "In an interview with reporters, IBM's eserver X series server global vice President Leo L. Suarez also said that customer application requirements are diverse, 8-way and above the x86 server still has its existence value. The customer application is designed in advance, and some applications are suitable for scaling up the server, such as the DB2 database. The application of the DB2 database is an upward expansion that requires more processors and greater memory capacity on the same machine. Different types of application determine the different design methods.

and Sun is a different idea. "The current application environment is very different from before." Previously, the server in the data center was connected to the P-C that acts as a terminal, making some simple applications. At this point, the server has several ways to represent the performance of the server is how high. But now, the user's application requirements are very complex, the requirements of the server is completely different. For example, with 4 processors, the requirements for processors, such as firewalls, Web applications, and so on, are different from the 4 processors that assume database applications. Web applications require a processor to handle a large number of simple operations in parallel, while database applications require higher I/O and a greater level two cache. Therefore, simply looking at the server in the number of processors is not comprehensive, but also need to start from the chip system design, this time the discussion is not to use a few road server, but with what chip. Sun's Li Zhiwen says, "from Sun's standpoint, there will still be a big market for the 8-way and the following X 8 6 servers for general applications that require a combination of databases, networks, operations, and so on." SUN offers a variety of servers based on Opteron processors to meet the needs of users. ”

New entrants into the market are also very bullish on the 8-way server market prospects. The company's technical director said that the 8-way server market positioning of the dawn of the previous SMP UNIX 16 Road, the following minicomputer market, 16-Channel RISC workstation market and small cluster system occupied by the market. Dawning A950 will change the x86 architecture of the following products themselves and Unix machines there is a huge gap between the current situation, Shuguang A950 also suitable for the financial, telecommunications and other high-end areas.

At the same time, the small cluster market with the characteristics of scientific computing and information service is growing rapidly at home, but because the architecture itself determines the performance, manageability and SMP of small cluster, the market needs small cluster development to new direction. Today, the dawn can borrow 8-way server to launch the cluster of two revolutions, the introduction of a small cluster of replacement programs. Shuguang A950 has the obvious price advantage and higher performance. Compared with the current market of the 2-way, 4-way server products, its performance and reliability has a qualitative improvement. Dawn believes that the advent of the 8-way Dawn a 9 5 0 will likely make the single node high density operation become a trend.

8 Road needs new selling law admittedly, because of the price reason, the user is not ideal for the 8-way server acceptance degree. According to IDC statistics, in the past 2004, China's 4-way and above server growth rate is much lower than the 1, 2-way server market, which also reflects the Chinese market, many small and medium-sized enterprises or by application to buy x86 server. In other words, many small and medium-sized enterprises in new applications, are inclined to buy another 1-way or 2-way server.

IBM eserver x series server Greater China General manager Fu Bin said that over the past few years, China's 4-way and above server market, in addition to some database applications and some professional applications will use more than 4 servers, many customers as investment protection to buy 4-way server. In other words, this part of the customer only uses 2 processors, he is for future investment protection upgrade application and purchase 4-way server.

However, IBM now sees that with more and more powerful 2-way processors, customers found that 2-way servers can also do a lot of 4-way server functions, so that 4 road and above the performance of the server is not reasonable, this is 2 road server market growth rate far more than 4 road and above the server market is one of the main reasons.

However, according to the market analysis report can be concluded that the x86 server processor actual utilization rate is only 2 5%, or even lower. In fact, virtualization is a cheaper and more efficient way to use it. As a result, IBM would like to be able to offer virtualization to change the sales model for 4-way and above servers. IBM hopes that when customers perform server consolidation, IBM's sales force and channels can meet the needs of their customers ' consolidation, providing them with a new consolidation outlet on the x86 platform, rather than necessarily moving to UNIX or mainframe platforms. SUN's Li Zhiwen says Solaris can already support the x86 platform, while the virtual partitioning feature on Solairis has been proven in enterprise-class applications for S P A R C servers.

In addition, the wave company said that 1--2 Road server is a kind of products to meet the wide range of needs, mainly used to meet the vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the application of information, mainly through the channel sales; 4, 8 of the main application of the server is a number of large-scale applications, key business, the application is relatively small, mainly through the way It should be noted that the wave has launched 8-way server products based on the PIII Xeon processor in 1999, but there are no 8-way server products based on the Xeon processor.

4x2 Not equal to 8x1

Shortly before the expiration of this article, AMD has launched its dual-core Opteron processor worldwide. Because AMD is designed to be seamlessly upgraded, this means that the original 4-way Opteron server can have 8 computing cores after the upgrade. At the same time, Intel Corporation's plans will also launch a dual-core processor in the future. So is the 4 (path) x2 (a compute kernel) equal to 8 (road) X1 (a computational kernel)?

Mr. Tang Zhide, Senior product manager at AMD, says that even from the processor's point of view, it needs to be analyzed in terms of the application. In the middle of AMD's product design, since two processor cores share some I/O channels, those that are I/O-sensitive applications (such as databases) are clearly 8x1 superior to 4x2; for compute-intensive applications (such as High-performance computing), the performance differences between 8X1 and 4x2 remain, but not very large. IBM says that since Intel's dual-core processor has not yet been available, there is no comparable comparison to give a definitive conclusion.

Sun said that because of historical reasons, 8-way server in the design concept and the general 4-way server is not exactly the same. 8-Way Server Master minicomputer design, its memory, I/O, power supply and other accessories are different from the 4-way server. For the 4-way server, if the seamless upgrade to the dual-core, which means that it in the accessories and peripheral coordination with the 8-way server is still a gap. With Sun's 8-way server Sun F I r e 8 8 0 compared to the dual-core 4-Way Sun F I r eV490, although the processing capacity may be small, but in terms of stability, it is clear that 8-way server is stronger.

The view of the wave company is similar to that of Sun Corporation. The advent of dual-core processors has enabled the 4-way server to have 8 CPU (kernel) SMP capabilities, and the processor's performance can be close to the performance of 8-way servers. But strictly speaking, 4 (road) X2 (nuclear) is not equal to 8 (road) X1 (nuclear). Because the dual-core bus, 4-way server processor performance can not be compared with the 8-way server, in addition to CPU computing capacity can not reach a true 8-way server level, 8-way server peripherals such as I/O equipment performance than 4-way server has a lot of increase and upgrade. In addition, the 4-way server cannot be compared to the 8-way server in terms of reliability.

Therefore, the wave that the emergence of dual-core processors will certainly be on the 8-way server market impact those because of the 4-way server performance and choose 8-way Server customers will reconsider their procurement options, however, because the 8-way server has better performance, there will still be some customers continue to use the 8-way server.

At the same time, almost all OEMs have indicated that the introduction of dual-core technology is an effective way to improve processor performance, it has nearly two single processor SMP performance, but the cost is much lower than the two single processors, all chip manufacturers are convinced that they will become a major feature of the next generation of computer systems, And it's an important feature. For example, Dell believes that China's dual-core server market is very attractive and plans to launch a poweredgesc430/830 server with Intel dual-core processors next month.

Dell believes that for mission-critical customers, many companies will choose more advanced products when the 4-way server price is the same as the 2-way price. And China's 4-way server market will also enter a rapid growth period.

Three views on the future development of the 8-way server Dell claims that the 8-way x86 server is an obsolete product, and that users choose such products only to be locked by a specific vendor, increasing system costs.

There's still life on the 8 road. It is believed that the emergence of the 8-way dawning A950 will probably make the single node high density operation become a trend.

A technology spokeswoman for IBM said the 8-ton truck would not be equal to 8 trucks with a load of 1 tonnes. Customer application requirements are diverse, 8-way and above the x86 server still has its existence value.

It's not important. Sun said that simply looking at the number of processors in the server is not comprehensive, but also need to start from the chip system design, this time the discussion is not to use a few road servers, but with what chip.

Summary as a x86 server crown jewel, 8-way server market trend is remarkable. Even though vendors are exiting the 8-way market for x86 servers, more vendors are joining in. Whether the virtualization technology can add new market growth point for 8-way x86 server, the dual-core 4-way server can impact the traditional single core 8-way processor, which is to be tested by the market. What you can expect is that with the increase in the number of suppliers on the 8-way server market, users can get more benefits--not just on the price, but on a more programmatic one.

According to IBM, "We want to help the x86 platform's servers get into the enterprise's critical application areas, not just as a departmental application server." ”

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