The Intel Xeon D Review: Performance Per Watt Server SoC Champion?
by Johan De Gelas on June 23, 2015 8:35 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon-D
- Broadwell-DE
Web Infrastructure Power consumption
Next we tested the system under load.
(*) measured/calculated to mimic a Xeon-E3 "m300-ish" board.
Let us entangle the results by separating the power that goes to the SoC and the power that goes to the system. We did a similar though experiment in our X-Gene 1, Atom C2000 and Xeon E3 comparison.
| Power Consumption SoC Calculations | ||
| SoC | Power Delta = Power Web - Idle (W) |
Power SoC = Power Delta + Idle SoC + Chipset (W) |
| Xeon E3- 1240 v3 3.4 | 95-42 = 53 | 53+3+3 = 59 |
| Xeon E3-1230L v2 1.8 | 68-41 = 27 (45-18 = 27) |
27+3+3 = 33 |
| Xeon D-1540 | 73-31 = 42 | 42+2+0 = 44 |
| Atom C2750 2.4 | 25-11 = 13 | 13+3+0 = 16 |
Now let us combine our calculated SoC power consumption and the power measurements in the graph above. The Atom C2750 still make sense in a micro server if CPU performance is not a priority: think static webservers and caching servers. You can fit an Atom C2750 server inside a power envelop of 25W as HP has proven. Based upon our own experience, such a Xeon D system would probably require more like 55 - 60 W.
If CPU performance is somewhat important, the Xeon D is the absolute champion. A Xeon E3-1230L server with similar features (2x 10 Gb for example) will probably consume almost the same amount of power as we have witnessed on our Asus P9D board (68 W). Given a decently scaling application with enough threads or some kind of virtualization (KVM/Hyper-V/Docker), the Xeon D server will thus consume at most about 1/3 more than an Xeon E3-1230L, but deliver almost twice as much performance.
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AkulaClass - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Nice stuff. Realy good to see them bringing power consumption down pr. Performance.WorldWithoutMadness - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Nice way to confuse people. Codename Yosemiteretrospooty - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Who would this confuse? Apple fans because of the OS witht he same codename?LOL. Believe me they don't know, or care... Most of them aren't even aware of what a "server" chip is, or even what a "server" is used for.
IanHagen - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Rails developer checking in to remind you that a great chunk of the Rails community develop using OS X to deploy on Linux and hence is aware of "server chips". Even though you said that "most" Apple users don't know what a server chip is and that's accurate, the same could be said about Windows or even Linux common users. Stop patronizing.All being said, I agree with you. Who could possibly confound the Xeon D's codename coincides with OS X's 10.10 name?
WinterCharm - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
First of all, your implication that apple fans don't know jack shit about servers is a broad generalization, and a stupid one at that.Second of all, anyone who knows enough to even consider buying a Xeon and a motherboard that supports it and the ECC memory, probably knows enough to not get confused. And plenty of mac users know what server chips are and what they're used for.
Nice trolling though.
adithyay328 - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
That's not entirely true, but I will agree that people a lot of the people who use Apples( No discrimination intended) only continue to use Apple due to their lack of tech knowledge( like knowing Android is the king :) . And, yes, they probably won;t know what servers even are.jeffsci - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Geographic code names are the norm in the computing industry (I think because they cannot be copyrighted) and they end up being reused. For example, Intel Seattle is/was a motherboard and AMD Seattle is/was an ARM64 processor. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codena... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_co... etc. if you would like to look for more examples :-)RaiderJ - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Any places in the US that the motherboard is available for purchase? Quick checks looks like it's mostly sold out or otherwise unavailable?ats - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
Availability comes and goes. Xeon D has been a big hit in the large scale deployment markets and they've been soaking up a lot of demand for it, both bare and combined on motherboards like the supermicro offerings severely limiting retail availability. But it is available in retail but quantities are limited. Quite a number of people over at servethehome have gotten their hands on them. If you want one, you'll likely have to keep checking the major sites like newegg, amazon, et al for them to come back in stock. Retail boards are generally in the $800-1000 range atm (basically going for full list but then again bare motherboards with 10gbe tend to go for 600+ so its still a good buy and simple new 10gbe cards tend to go for $300-500).ToTTenTranz - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
How come they call this a SoC if there's no integrated module to drive even a simple display, and they apparently need a discrete PCIe graphics card for that D-SUB output?