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Leading Virtualization Performance with Dunnington

Thursday, October 23 2008 05:00 PM

Find out why the latest Intel® Xeon® 7400 series processors is an excellent platform for virtualization. Adesh Gupta from Intel explains how the 45nm process technology and the powerful 6 cores in the latest processors delivers exceptional performance while consuming less power.

Hi, My name is Adesh Gupta from Intel and I will be talking to you today about the Leading Virtualization Performance with Dunnington.

If you look at the various trends in the industry today, virtualization by far is the leading deployment in the enterprise.

So why is virtualization so hot?

Well, for a number of reasons.

One, virtualization helps in reducing server sprawl, allowing you to consolidate your compute resources in your MIS or your data center.

Second, virtualization helps in energy savings and reducing the server footprint, thereby efficiently running multiple simultaneous applications on your server platform.

And third, virtualization helps in better manageability and provisioning, allowing you to efficiently run your IT operations, thereby leading to a reduction in your cost of ownership.

The Dunnington processor is best-suited to run your applications in a virtualized environment.

The Dunnington processor is based on the 45nm hafnium-infused hi-k metal gate transistor technology. Compared to the previous generation 65nm process technology, the 45nm process improves the transistor density by 100%.

It increases the transistor switching speed by 20% and it lowers the transistor power by 30%.

In addition to that, with 45nm process, it lowers the gate oxide leakage power by 10 times.

Also, the 45nm process is eco-friendly, thereby releasing less toxins into the atmosphere.

The Dunnington processor combined with the features of the 45nm process technology allows you to do more with less, giving you exceptional performance while consuming less electricity.

This is the Xeon 7400 series code-named Dunnington processor. Let's look at the conceptual architecture of the processor as it sits inside the server platform.

The Dunnington processor is a 45nm processor, we saw that before.

It has 1.9 billion transistors, 3 times more than the previous generation CPU.

It has 16MB of Level 3 Cache, again combined, more than 3 times of previous generation CPU.

Each processor is connected to the 7300 chipset on a 30k data high-speed Inter-connect bus, delivering more than 2 times the bandwidth as compared to the previous generation chipset.

The 7300 chipset with the snoop filter and data optimizations built-in, supports 256 GB memory today on 32 DIMMS with the ability to support 512 GB memory in the future.

The Dunnington processor, with the 7300 chipset, has virtualization capabilities like Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel Flex-migration Technology, allowing it to seamlessly migrate 32-bit and 64-bit, as well as virtual machines, from one server to another.

VMDq, a feature that allows you to reduce the overhead on the virtual machine monitor or the VMM.

Intel Flex Priority, which allows you to switch between 32-bit and 64-bit guest VMs, reducing the overhead on the VMM and the CPU.

And Intel I/O Acceleration Technology, which reduces the I/O overhead on the CPU for the TCP/IP traffic.

These capabilities on the platform in addition to 256GB memory support and 16 MB Level 3 cache with 6 cores, is an outstanding platform in a virtualized environment.

We have seen this platform deliver 39% performance, while consuming 11% lower electricity as compared to the previous generation platform.

In short, you're looking at the world's first 6 core x86 processor, delivering best in-class virtualization platform performance for your enterprise applications.

I'm Adesh Gupta from Intel. Thank you for listening.