Opinion: Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series

'This week Intel releases its new Xeon processor codenamed Nehalem.

The new Intel microarchitecture will enter a marketplace in which vendors of x86 servers are witnessing rising adoption of server virtualisation.

As the global financial crisis spurs workload consolidation,workload densities are increasing per physical server, management software tools are being updated to better control both physical and virtual servers, and efforts to produce energy-efficient servers are increasing.

All of these technology trends are collectively aimed at improving resource utilisation on x86 servers, while reducing ongoing operational costs within the datacentre.

As the global financial crisis hits Australia the need for cost effective computing solutions is becoming more critical.

Built on 45nm wafer process technology, Nehalem based servers will allow customers to do more with less; lowering their operating expenses and producing higher return on investment.

Nehalem introduces significant changes to Intel's main line x86-64 microprocessor and will be the fastest x86 CPU produced.

The source of this new found performance comes from a number of technologies; an on-die DDR3 memory controller, a larger three-tiered cache, the interconnect capability from Intel's QuickPath Interconnect Protocol (QPI) and Intel Hyper-Threading.

Intel Hyper-Threading (otherwise known as simultaneous multithreading) improves the performance of multithreaded workloads.

Nehalem allows two threads to run per core, which leads to 8 simultaneous threads per quad-core processor and 16 simultaneous threads on dualprocessor, quad-core nodes.

Between QuickPath and the integrated memory controller, a Nehalem processor will have access to greater aggregate bandwidth, which in turn should provide real performance gains for bandwidth-limited applications.

IDC research shows that for every $1 invested in new server hardware, $8 is spent on powering, cooling and managing the server.

This means that in large compute environments, companies stand to save considerable amounts of money from their operating expense budgets by implementing new generation servers, virtualisation and management software.

Therefore, coupled with virtualisation technology, Nehalem based servers will begin to attract business from parts of the server market traditionally out of reach from Intel such as the RISC Unix segment.'

In 2008 the non-x86 server market in Australia topped A$530 million in factory revenue and the potential upside for Intel is significant.

In 2008 x86 based servers accounted for over 127,000 units shipped in Australia, and over 90 percent of those were from Intel.