For Cloud Servers Intel will release SoC SoC

In cloud computing deployments, the implementation of high-density servers has been further enhanced, and Intel hopes to take a bigger share of the big cake in the server market by shipping server chips to be released next year.

Intel hopes to integrate Broadwell-DE high-performance server chips on its server boards. As Intel's first system-in-server server chip, the Broadwell-DE chipset does not support slot mounting, which is the difference between the chip and other standard server chips.

"It enables more high-density motherboard designs," said Shannon Poulin, Intel vice president and general manager of data center marketing.

Broadwell DE chips will be officially listed in the second half of 2014 or early 2015.

Server makers such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell are considering reducing the energy costs of their data centers while continuing to deliver high-performance servers. For the most part, Hewlett-Packard Co. has high hopes for Moonshot servers, a very large server with hundreds of low-power core chips and the ability to handle search requests, social networking applications, and other cloud computing tasks. Hewlett-Packard claims that a 4.3U Moonshot server system delivers higher performance than a standard rack server, while also saving space and enabling lower power consumption.

There are other benefits and shortcomings for system-level server chips such as Broadwell-DE, Poulin said. System-on-chip designs help eliminate potential system bottlenecks, but slot-based server chips have access to more memory and compute resources that will help improve performance that Broadwell-DE can not.

The chip can be equipped with a variety of I / O controllers and can be tailored to storage-class applications and network-based applications to meet actual needs, Poulin said. The Broadwell-DE chip is a faster device than Intel's other low-power, Atom-based server chips. The Broadwell-DE chip will be manufactured in a 14nm process.

Broadwell-DE chip-level design will help reduce some of the bus interface and improve system performance, but the performance is slightly worse in reliability and functionality, which requires users to weigh the pros and cons of the actual application, Tirias Reseach's chief Analyst Jim McGregor said.

"The chip was designed to allow the company to go further in the cyber world but to server applications," McGregor said.

For Intel, getting a foothold in networking and connecting more and more devices is especially significant, McGregor said.

In the second half of next year, Intel will also release a Xeon server chip based on Haswell's microarchitecture called Grantley. The company will also integrate modules with its own intellectual property in its server chip, which will make it easier to customize the chip.

"For any individual or organization that wants to work with us, we will carefully review the functional modules they want to add to our products," said Poulin. "Most of the designs were developed to meet people's unique application needs."

Intel's server chips are basically based on their own technology, but in the past year the company has greatly expanded its offerings to large data center customers such as Facebook and Google Inc. Custom chip business efforts. The degree of processor and chip customization varies with workload, data center design, and power consumption. For example, Intel Corp. has implemented chip customization with specific customizations including changing the clock frequency, adding accelerators, increasing cache capacity, and adding more cores. The company also added custom logic for server chips.

Next year will be Intel's year of "recovery," and the company will face challenges such as emerging server processors based on the ARM architecture, said McGregor of Tirias Research.

According to the personage forecast, ARM server is expected to be put on the market next year, it will arouse the interest of the trade as a substitute of the traditional x86 server, and the traditional x86 server has occupied the main share of server market all the time.

ARM will spend years building a meaningful market place, but Intel will begin to face the pressure on server chip prices, McGregor said. For years Intel has been carrying out expensive policies on server chips, so some companies have started to look to ARM for cost savings, McGregor said.

But Intel overall strength enough to meet any of the challenges of competitors, while the company had just spent in 2013 has been to promote low-power servers and open up new markets, the company will continue to implement this strategy in 2014, Poulin Add that the company's server chip shipments are expected to continue to grow.