Underlying smart Intel Xeon E5 processor analysis (1)

Intel released the Xeon E5-2600/1600 series processor in early March, following the famous Tick-Tock strategy. The generation of Xeon E5-2600 series still follows the SandyBridge architecture adopted by single-channel Xeon E3, but because E5 is a product for dual-channel applications, it is named "SandyBridge-EP ". As Intel's main product, Xeon E5-2600/1600 series processor is mainly to provide better cloud services and high performance computing environment. Next, we will introduce the advantages and features of the Xeon E5 processor as the foundation for computing on the cloud computing platform from the perspective of technology and application.

Four major technological innovations facilitate cloud computing infrastructure

For cloud computing applications, powerful performance is the key to ensuring effective applications. This Intel Xeon E5 series processor has greatly improved the computing capability of the processor, thus achieving faster running speed and greater processing capability. Specifically, the Xeon E5 series processor has the following four major improvements compared with the previous generation of Xeon 5600 series.

Introduction to Xeon E5-2600 Processor Architecture

The figure shows us 4 important messages-8 core, QPI 8.0GT/S channel, DDR3 high-frequency memory support, PCI-E 3.0 interconnection. Here we will explain these four elements one by one.

8 core processors-- In the previous generation of Westmere-EP processors, some high-end models use a 6-core architecture, which is also the number of Intel's top-level cores in dual-processor. Of course, with the support of hyper-threading, this number of cores can double, but from a physical point of view, Intel has been taking responsibility for 6 core products before E5-2600.

Now the E5-2600 series has been developed, with 8 processors at the core. This is not only a simple increase in the number of processors, you must know that in the E3 processors that are also applicable to the SandyBridge architecture, there are only four cores. More physical cores can provide better computing performance. Of course, the advantages of multiple cores are more obvious for popular virtualization.

Article 2 QPI Channel-- Compared with the Westmere-EP processor of the previous generation, Intel has greatly improved its performance since it added the QPI concept in Nehalem-EP. In the E5-2600, the number of channels increased to 2, and the bandwidth also increased to 8GT/s, before is 6.4GT/s. In other words, based on the SandyBridge architecture, dual-channel products provide more processor interoperability functions than single-channel products, which makes the coordination between two or more processors smoother, the implication is that performance will also increase.

DDR3 high-frequency memory support-- Starting from Nehalem-EP, Intel supports three-channel DDR3 memory. At that time, the frequency was 1066 MHz. In the Westmere-EP generation, the three-channel memory support has not changed, but the frequency has increased to 1333 MHz. Today, the Xeon E5-2600 product has changed. First of all, the support for memory frequency reaches 1600 MHz, which is not the most important-Xeon E5-2600 series support 4-channel memory, the maximum number of memory slots has increased from 18 to 24. In terms of quantity, 3*6 and 4*6 seem to be much more, but the number of channel groups that can be implemented is the same. Of course, there are also significant changes in the memory of this generation, which will be mentioned later.

PCI-E 3.0 Interconnect-- Intel added support for PCI-E 3.0 specifications in the Xeon E5 processor, but this generation of motherboard can only provide PCI-E 2.0 interfaces. Intel will fully support the PCI-E 3.0 specification in the foreseeable next generation of IvyBridge processors. This part will be explained in detail later. Here we will give you an impression.