New Intel® Xeon® Processor Increases Server Efficiency and Capabilities

fact sheet Vendor: Intel Corporation (www.intel.com) Vendor's Information: About Intel Xeon Processor 5500 About Intel Corporation

Even the world's largest data centers are running at or near capacity. The problem isn't so much physical space as it is the capacity to power and cool data centers with the cost of electricity rising. At the same time, the number of data center employees is holding steady at best.

In order to dramatically reduce operating costs, IT organizations are refreshing existing data centers and turning to more efficient servers that use less energy and take up less space. The key is to get greater performance from these servers.

The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, built on a new generation Intel microarchitecture codenamed Nehalem, relies on three pillars to give data center administrators the efficiency and flexibility they need today.

First, the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series features intelligent performance that optimizes the server's performance to fit the requirements of the business and the application. Second, automated energy efficiency reduces the operating costs of servers running Intel Xeon processor 5500 series by scaling energy usage to the workload and getting the most performance per watt of energy consumed. Finally, the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series helps data center administrators take advantage of virtualization with best-in-class performance and manageability in virtualized environments.

Intelligent Performance
Intelligent performance means servers running Intel Xeon processor 5500 series can adjust performance and power usage in real time to meet the exact requirements of users' computing workloads. Manual adjustment is available to give IT control of the server's power and performance.

Several technologies drive the intelligent performance of servers powered by the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series.

Intel Turbo Boost Technology and Intel Intelligent Power Technology work to give Intel Xeon processor 5500 series performance on demand so they only run on full power when they need it. Turbo Boost Technology lets the processor run operate above its rated frequency to speed specific workloads.

Intel Hyper-Threading Technology allows simultaneous multi-threading within each processor core. It reduces computational latency, which makes optimal use of every clock cycle. It benefits from larger caches and massive memory bandwidth to deliver greater throughput and responsiveness for multi-threaded applications.

Intel QuickPath Technology is a new, scalable shared memory architecture that delivers up to 3.5x the bandwidth of previous-generation processors. It provides high-speed point-to-point between the processors in a server and between the processors and the I/O hub. Each processor has its own dedicated memory that it accesses directly through an Integrated Memory Controller. When a processor needs to access the dedicated memory of another processor, it can do so using a high-speed Intel QuickPath Interconnect that links all of the processors.

Automated Energy Efficiency
The automated energy-efficiency features of Intel Microarchitecture codenamed Nehalem delivers 5x improvement in power management capabilities compared to the first Intel quad-core server processors by allowing 5x as many operating states, a 5x reduction in idle power, and 5x faster transitions to and from low-power states.

Intel Intelligent Power Technology introduces power management to all of the platform components: the processor, chipset, and memory. This allows operating systems to put processor power and memory into the lowest available states needed to support current workloads without reducing performance and allowing individual cores to be idled independent of the others. Using this combination of features, the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series can deliver up to 50 percent lower server idle power. Intel Intelligent Power Technology makes power available for critical workloads while conserving power where there is less demand, delivering as much as 2.25x more performance in a similar power envelope and dramatically reducing idle power.

Maximum Virtualization Benefits
The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series helps server administrators take advantage of virtualization with innovations that boost performance, increase consolidation ratios, and enable servers of different generations to be combined in the same virtualized server pool, improving virtual machine failover, load balancing, and disaster recovery capabilities.

The next-generation Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) in Intel Microarchitecture codenamed Nehalem enhances virtualization performance by up to 2.1x and reduces roundtrip virtualization latency by up to 40 percent. Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT-x) continues to offer investment protection and infrastructure flexibility with multigeneration virtual machine (VM) migration across the full range of 32-bit and 64-bit configurations, enabling bigger VM pools.

Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel VT-c) enables hardware-assisted I/O that accelerates network performance and simplifies VM migration.

Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d) helps speed data movement and eliminates much of the performance overhead by giving designated VMs their own dedicated I/O devices, reducing the overhead of the VM migration in managing I/O traffic.

Servers for Any Environment
Intel Xeon processor 5500 series servers provide a proven foundation for organizations of all sizes. From standard enterprise servers in a corporate data center and high-performance computing (HPC) environments to workstations and small and medium-sized businesses, Intel Xeon 5500 series servers provides performance and energy efficiency.

In standard enterprise data center server environments, two-processor platforms based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series deliver the energy efficiency and virtualization support to help administrators get the most out of each rack.

Intel Xeon processor 5500 series delivers up to 4x greater performance for HPC applications than Intel dual-core processors. Two-processor servers based on the Intel Xeon 5500 processor have up to eight computation engines, 16 threads per two-socket platform with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, and as much as 3.5x more bandwidth than previous generations.

Two-processor workstation platforms based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series deliver as much as 2x more performance and flexibility to help workstation users solve bigger problems, build a business advantage, or rapidly create, simulate, analyze, and visualize the success of new ideas. Such expert workstations provide powerful digital workbenches that enable users to maximize computing and graphics power to solve and visualize large-scale problems faster.

Great performance, cost, and energy efficiency aren't exclusive to the big boys. The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series helps small and medium sized businesses get up to 9x higher performance per server and up to 90 percent lower operating costs compared to installed single-core servers. It can also deliver an estimated 8-month payback on investment.

Visit the Intel Resource Center to learn about the benefits of the new Xeon Processors »