HP picks Intel chip for quad-core servers
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard launched a server based onÂ Intel's new Tigerton quad-core Xeon processorÂ Thursday, battling IBM for customers who run data-intensive business applications like enterprise resource planning and virtualization software. HP announced the rack-based ProLiant DL580 G5 and the blade-shaped ProLiant BL680c G5, each using four of Intel's Xeon 7300-series chips. Compared to HP's current ProLiant servers with dual-core versions of the Xeon or AMD's Opteron chips, both new servers are designed to better support virtualization, allowing users to handle their applications with a smaller number of servers than they need today, the company said. The announcement comes less than a week before AMD is expected to launch its own quad-core server chip, called Barcelona. HP, SunÂ and other vendors are expected to use that processor in a range of new platforms for similar markets. In the meantime, Intel is enjoying increased popularity for its Tigerton chip. IBM also chose the Xeon 7300 chip to upgrade its server lineup, combining the processor with its own X4 chipset instead of Intel's Clarksboro chipset. IBM announced the System x3950 M2 server on Wednesday, also touting its virtualization abilities. IBM designed the server for fast-growing businesses so it can easily scale up for larger deployments, such as data centers and ERP or CRM applications from providers like SAP and Oracle, said Jay Bretzmann, manager of product marketing for IBM. Compared to systems based on its X3 chipset, IBM will add memory and an internal USBÂ interface for loading embedded virtualization software. "As cores started multiplying, the need for memory started growing, particularly in the virtualization space. So we offered a low entry price point and head room to grow," Bretzmann said. Together, those improvements will allow users to get greater utilization out of their servers instead of having the computers sit idle while waiting for new jobs, he said. "There are so many applications that really scale. Databases are the flagship; if you write a database that doesn't scale well, you're not going to be in business for long. But virtualization allows you to load multiple OSes and achieve the flexibility and utilization that are key for quad-core technology," he said. IBM intends to keep its X4 chipset in the market through 2009, then offer a fifth-generation version by 2010, he said. IBM plans to launch the System x3950 M2 server at high volume in the fourth quarter. HP is selling the DL580 for $9,219 and the BL680c for $9,669. IBM will announce pricing for the System x3950 M2 when it is shipped, in the fourth quarter.
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Microsoft gave some encouraging news for IT managers considering future server hardware based on multicore processors. Both Intel and AMD are developing multicore chips, which pack two processors onto a single
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Hewlett-Packard has announced the next iteration in its Compaq X gaming PC line, which uses the new 3.8-GHz Pentium 4 570. The launch of Intel&#39;s new chip was expected, the last entrant in Intel&#39;s single-core processor line.
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New high-end dual-core Opterons will power servers.
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Hewlett-Packard's Integrity rx4640 server is available with Intel's new Itanium 2 processor, which has 9MB of high-speed cache memory.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. will ship quad-core processors in November for servers and gaming PCs, accelerating its effort to regain momentum in sales of power-efficient chips. Thirteen vendors have already announced plans to sell quad-core based PCs for the high-end enthusiast market, including Dell Inc. and its Alienware division, Gateway, Velocity Micro and Voodoo, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said Tuesday at the company's Intel Developer Forum trade show. Adding extra cores to a chip allows the PC to split up heavy workloads. In a demonstration at the San Francisco show, Otellini showed "Alan Wake," a planned video game from Remedy that devotes an entire CPU (central processing unit) core to the physics simulation of action scenes like explosions and tornadoes. The new quad-core gaming chip will deliver a 70 percent performance boost compared to Intel's own current dual-core gaming processor, the company said. Intel will follow that "Core 2 Extreme" chip with the "Core 2 Quad," a four-core chip for mainstream desktops that will ship in the first quarter of 2007, he said. On the server side, Intel will call its new quad-core chip the Xeon 5300, and follow its November launch with a more efficient, 50-watt version in the first quarter of 2007. The launches would be a crucial boost for Intel, which has been losing market share to competitor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and missing recent earnings targets, prompting Otellini to sell several corporate divisions and lay off 10,000 people in recent weeks. In the past quarter, the company also accelerated its schedule for shipping a new generation of dual-core, 65-nanometer process chips, featuring the Core 2 Duo chip for notebooks and desktops and the Xeon 5100 for servers. Intel claims to have had great commercial success with the new family, shipping 5 million Core 2 Duo processors since the chips launched 60 days ago. Still, the adoption rate for AMD's dual-core Opteron server chip has continued to grow, since many experts consider it far more power efficient in data centers. Reaching customers first with quad-core chips could help Intel to change that reputation. "Perception doesn't change overnight, but what you're seeing is Intel rebuilding itself, rebuilding its product line and laying a foundation for the future," Otellini said. While adding more cores to a PC or server helps it computer faster, users also demand efficiency. So Intel will maintain current power levels in the new family of four-core chips, running the Core 2 Extreme at 130 watts, and the mainstream Core 2 Quad around 100 watts. The company will make three versions of its quad-core server chips, ranging from a high-efficiency 50-watt chip to a standard 80-watt and a high-performance chip above that. Intel is also pushing new technology to market by continuing to shrink the process technology it uses to build the chips. Intel will start producing 45-nm process chips by the second half of 2007 at a US$3 billion fab in Oregon, adding another plant in Arizona that year and a third in Israel by the first half of 2008, he said. That will allow Intel to move from its current 65-nm Core microarchitecture to the 45-nm "Nehalem" design by 2008 and the 32-nm "Gesher" family by 2010.
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Chip maker offers few details about its plans for dual-core server processors.
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Intel will help server network interfaces take advantage of major recent advances: multiprocessor systems, multicore processors, and virtualization.
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(InfoWorld) - IntelÂ plans to launch the third model of its four-core processor in January, continuing its efforts tostay ahead of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on the next-generation processor family. Intel will launch the Core 2 Quad chip for high-end desktop PCs during the CES trade show in Las Vegas the week of Jan. 8, industry sources said. The new chip follows Intel'sÂ launch in November of its quad-core Xeon 5300 for servers and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers. Quad-core chips can handle complex tasks faster than single-core chips by using multithreaded software to break each job into smaller pieces, then computing them simultaneously. The chips are most popular with users of servers and workstations running programs like digital media creation and high-end gaming. Intel plans to target this new chip at a broader segment of mainstream users, though it will still focus on processor-intensive, highly threaded programs such as entertainment, gaming and multimedia activities. In the long run, the company plans to use multicore processors as the engines for its full array of technology platforms in the digital home, office, mobile and enterprise markets. Intel is relying on the new design to help it regain momentum in the processor market, where it has lost valuable market share to AMD's dual-core Opteron and Athlon chips in recent months. In response, AMD has shown demonstration versions of itsimproved four-core "Barcelona" version of Opteron, but does not plan to sell the chip commercially until the second half of 2007. The launch of the Core 2 Quad was expected, since Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini had discussed a January launch at the company's trade show in September. But Intel has not announced a release date, the clock speed, price or which hardware vendors plan to use the new microprocessor in PCs.
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Blog: The graphics chipmaker has a new lineup of chips that can be plugged into servers or workstations to boost the performance of scientific computing applications.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. says it has rushed introduction of a new quad-core chip originally scheduled for next year to Monday to meet demand from server manufacturers for the processor. Intel is shipping the Xeon 5335 processor two months ahead of schedule as an addition to its 5300 series of quad core processors. Quad cores, which allow the microprocessor package to perform up to four functions simultaneously,Â were first introduced by Intel in November. Intel has been pushed by rivalÂ Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s plans to launch a quad-core release in 2007. The 5335 is a 2GHz processor with a 1.333GHz front-side bus and 8M bytes of Level 2 memory cache. The front side bus is the connection between the central processing unit and the memory cache. The 5335's list price is US$690 when purchased in quantities of 1,000 or more. It is positioned above the 5320 model, which features a 1.86GHz processor, a 1.066GHz front-side bus, selling for $455, and below the 5345, with a 2.33GHz processor and a 1.333GHz front-side bus for $851. All three operate at 80 watts, compared to higher-end 5300s, which operate at 120 watts. "The OEMs wanted these new processors. They said if there's anything you could do so we could get the products early, it'd help," said Jason Waxman, director of Xeon server platforms marketing for Intel. Waxman declined to be specific about which Intel fabrication facilities globally were used to make the 5335, but said Intel has the capacity to gear up production ahead of schedule. The 5335 will be installed in server and/or workstations from companies such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Silicon Graphics Inc. and IBM Corp. "It helps deliver that improved performance and allows people to get more out of a quad-core on a dual-socket server," said David Lord, a spokesman for Dell, who added that the 5335 is available as of Monday for order in a Dell PowerEdge server. Intel still has two other quad-core processors to introduce in the first quarter, including a low volt 50-watt version, said Erica Fields, an Intel spokesperson. Â  This story has been corrected since its original release to reflect accurate prices.
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Three midrange servers featuring the new chip will be shown at Intel Developer Forum.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel plans to unveil a version of its Xeon processor on Wednesday that's designed for high-end servers with multiple processors -- setting the stage for a showdown with rivalÂ Advanced Micro Devices' upcoming quad-core Barcelona chip. The Xeon 7300 chips, called Tigerton, are the first quad-core processors from Intel designed to be used in servers with four or more processors, a relatively small but lucrative segment of the server market. Previously, the Xeon processor for this segment of the market had two cores, despite the availability of quad-core Xeon chips for single-processor and two-way servers. The new chips offer significantly better performance compared to their predecessors,Â Intel's Xeon 5300 chips, said Adesh Gupta, regional platform architecture manager at Intel Asia-Pacific's Server Platforms Group. "Across the spectrum of different applications, we're seeing really, really good performance," Gupta said. Benchmarks run by Intel showed significant gains for many enterprise applications, including SAP's ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, Gupta said. The 7300 series chips can handle roughly 82 percent more ERP users and 92 percent more database transactions than the 5300 chips, he said. The 7300 is part of theÂ Caneland chip package, which also includes Intel's 7300 chip set, known as Clarksboro. The new chip set has four 1,066MHz interconnects that are linked to an individual processor, helping reduce latency between the processors and main memory. Caneland is the last release expected from Intel before AMD announces the availability of its Barcelona server chips on Sept. 10. Barcelona is widely expected to offer significant performance increases over AMD's existing dual-core server chips, and should mean tighter competition with Intel in the server space. Intel will initially offer six versions of Tigerton. At the top of the range is the X7350, a 2.93GHz chip designed with 8MB of shared on-chip cache and a thermal design power (TDP) of 130 watts. TDP is the highest sustainable level of power for applications that Intel expects to be run on the chip, and the number describes how much heat a system must be able to dissipate from the chip. Intel is also offering several Xeon 7300 chips with a TDP of 80 watts. The E7340 runs at 2.4GHz and offers 8MB of shared on-chip cache. The E7330 also runs at 2.4GHz, but has 6MB of cache. The E7320 and E7310 both have 4MB of shared cache and run at clock speeds of 2.13GHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. Intel will also release a 50-watt version that runs at 1.86GHz. The L7345 has 8MB of shared on-chip cache and is designed for blade servers and high-density rack servers. Two dual-core versions of the Tigerton chip, the E7220 and E7210, will also be available, running at speeds of 2.93GHz and 2.4GHz with a TDP of 80 watts. Both chips have a shared on-chip cache of 8MB and are designed for high-performance computing applications. Tigerton's improved performance doesn't come cheap. The processors are priced from $856 to $2,301 per chip in 1,000-unit quantities, a standard measure of processor pricing. The 7300 will also be the last server chip announced by Intel, before itsÂ upcoming Penryn chipsÂ are made available later this year. Made using a 45-nanometer process that will allow more cache to be put on each chip, the first Penryn server chips are expected to be released in November. Those chips are intended for use in single-processor and two-way servers. The Penryn server chip for multiple-processor servers is called Dunnington and will not be available until late 2008, Gupta said.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. will release the final processor upgrade for its AlphaServer line of Unix servers on Monday.
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Barcelona is finally here. Four years since its last major chip upgrade, AMD is introducing the quad-core Operton server processor, which the company has described as &quot;the most advanced x86 processor&quot; ever made.
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Superfast servers with Intel's new quad-core Xeon 5300 processor coming in January.
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Ten months after Intel shipped its first quad-core server processor, Advanced Micro Devices finally released a quad-core Opteron that the upstart vendor hopes to use to recapture its momentum in the server market.