Intel Xeon E5 Server depth analysis and initial evaluation

It is Coming. I was so excited that I could hardly express my feelings in words. After so long, we have been waiting for the latest generation of Intel dual processor products finally meet you, that is today we want to introduce the Xeon E5-2600 series.

Intel publishes the Sandy Bridge Micro-architecture 32nm Xeon processor

According to Intel's renowned tock strategy, the new generation of Xeon E5-2600 series still follows the Sandybridge architecture of the previous single Xeon E3, but because E5 is a dual-application-oriented product, it is named "Sandybridge-ep". As Intel's main product, the Xeon E5 still uses the 32nm process, this is certain, because the lower specification 22nm code-named processor to be able to be listed in the second half, as soon as the server Edition's Market time has to drag some. Judging by this, the Xeon E5 is Intel's flagship model in the server market this year, and its new presence is bound to replace the WESTMERE-EP product (which we call the Xeon 5600 series) that was released 2 years ago.

Waiting for so long, we will introduce to you the latest features of the xeon® e5-2600 series. But before we introduce, we want you to have a little bit of time to familiarize yourself with the features of the Sandybridge architecture to better understand the features of the E5-2600 series in dual applications and Intel's efforts to achieve multiprocessor interoperability. The following two articles are detailed descriptions of the Sandybridge architecture.

If you have a good understanding of the Sandybridge architecture of the Xeon E3, you can think of the e5-2600 as a E3 dual or powerful version. Let's take a look at the following architecture diagram, where the red part represents the innovation of the E5-2600 series.

Xeon E5-2600 Processor Architecture Introduction

The figure provides us with 4 important information--8 Core, the second QPI channel, DDR3 High frequency memory support, PCI 3.0 interworking. Here's a one explanation of these 4 elements.

8 Core processors-in the previous generation of WESTMERE-EP processors, some high-end models used 6 core architectures, which are the top core quantities Intel offers in dual-channel processors. Of course, with Hyper-threading support, this number of core numbers can be doubled, but from a physical point of view Intel has been tasked with 6 core products before e5-2600.

Now the E5-2600 series, the core of the processor has increased to 8. This is not just a simple quantity boost, but the number of cores in the E3 processor, which also applies to the Sandybridge architecture, is only 4. More physical cores can provide better computing performance, and, of course, for today's popular virtualization, the multiple-core advantage is even more pronounced (which is why AMD has to launch 16 core bulldozer).

The second QPI channel-the same contrast to the previous generation of WESTMERE-EP processors, Intel has been providing a single channel (two-way transmission) since the concept of QPI has been added to NEHALEM-EP. And this time in the e5-2600, the number of channels increased to 2, and the bandwidth has been upgraded to 8GT/S, before the 6.4gt/s. In other words, the same is based on the Sandybridge architecture, two-way products add more processor interoperability than a single product, which makes the coordination between two or more processors smoother, with the implication that performance will also improve.

DDR3 High-frequency memory support--starting with NEHALEM-EP, Intel supports three-channel DDR3 memory, which is 1066MHz. To westmere-ep this generation, the three-channel memory support has not changed, but the frequency has been increased to 1333MHz. Today, the e5-2600 of this generation of xeon® products has changed. First, the memory frequency of the support reached 1600MHz, which is not the most important-the Xeon E5-2600 series supports 4-channel memory, the maximum number of memory slots from the original 18 to 24. In terms of quantity, 3*6 and 4*6 seem to be a lot more, but the number of channel groups that can be implemented is the same. Of course, there has also been a noticeable change in the memory of this generation, which we will mention later.

PCI 3.0 Interconnection-Intel adds support for the PCI 3.0 specification in the Xeon E5 processor, but this generation of motherboards can only provide PCI 2.0 interfaces. Intel will fully support the PCI 3.0 specification in the foreseeable next generation code-named processor. This part we will have a detailed explanation, here to give you a first impression.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)