Intel Xeon E5 Version 3: Up to 18 Haswell EP Cores
by Johan De Gelas on September 8, 2014 12:30 PM ESTSAP S&D
The SAP S&D 2-Tier benchmark has always been one of my favorites. This is probably the most real world benchmark of all server benchmarks done by the vendors. It is a full blown application living on top of a heavy relational database. And don't forget that SAP is one of the most successful software companies out there, the market leader of Enterprise Resource Planning.
We analyzed the SAP Benchmark in-depth in one of our earlier articles:
- Very parallel resulting in excellent scaling
- Low to medium IPC, mostly due to "branchy" code
- Somewhat limited by memory bandwidth
- Likes large caches (memory latency)
- Very sensitive to sync ("cache coherency") latency
Let us see how the new Xeon E5 fares in this ERP benchmark.
(*) Preliminary data
The SAP application is very well optimized for NUMA, so the Cluster On Die snooping mode gives a small but measureable boost (about 5%). The huge L3 cache is a blessing for SAP S&D, as it misses the L2 cache more often than most server applications. Last and but not least, once you have the caching part covered, SAP S&D scales well with more cores and it shows. Intel has been able to almost double SAP performance in about 2.5 years with one "tick-tock" cycle.
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coburn_c - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
MY God - It's full of transistors!Samus - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I wish there were socket 1150 Xeon's in this class. If I could replace my quad core with an Octacore...wireframed - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
If you can afford an 8-core CPU, I'm sure you can afford a S2011 board - it's like 15% of the price of the CPU, so the cost relative to the rest of the platform is negligible. :)Also, s1150 is dual-channel only. With that many cores, you'll want more bandwidth.
peevee - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link
For many, if not most workloads it will be faster to run 4 fast (4GHz) cores on 4 fast memory channels (DDR4-2400+) than 8 slow (2-3GHz) cores on 2 memory channels. Of course, if your workload consists of a lot of trigonometry (sine/cosine etc), or thread worksets completely fit into 2nd level cache (only 256k!), you may benefit from 8/2 config. But if you have one of those, I am eager to hear what it is.tech6 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The 18 core SKU is great news for those trying to increase data center density. It should allow VM hosts with 512Gb+ of memory to operate efficiently even under demanding workloads. Given the new DDR4 memory bandwidth gains I wonder if the 18 core dual socket SKUs will make quad socket servers a niche product?Kevin G - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
In fairness, quad socket was already a niche market.That and there will be quad socket version of these chips: E5-4600v3's.
wallysb01 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
My lord. My thought is that this really shows that v3 isn’t the slouch many thought it would be. An added 2 cores over v2 in the same price range and turbo boosting that appears to functioning a little better, plus the clock for clock improvements and move to DDR4 make for a nice step up when all combined.I’m surprised Intel went with an 18 core monster, but holy S&%T, if they can squeeze it in and make it function, why not.
Samus - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I feel for AMD, this just shows how far ahead Intel is :\Thermogenic - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Intel isn't just ahead - they've already won.olderkid - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
AMD saw Intel behind them and they wondered how Intel fell so far back. But really Intel was just lapping them.