New microchips have more cores, less watts

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 10/01/2007 3:44 PM

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

Many years ago, talk about data centers and enterprise computing usually invoked the image of huge mainframe towers lined up along walls, standing from the floor up to the ceiling.

This is no longer the case today. In newly built data centers we will normally find racks containing slim boxes calledIntel has managed to raise the power of its processors so that they can run heavy-duty applications such as Customer Relationship Management and messaging systems on a stack of these boxes.

The microprocessor maker secured its position in the enterprise market by introducing the Xeon processor following the more consumer-oriented Pentium products. The first Xeon processors appeared in 1998. They replaced the Pentium Pros, and at first they were called Pentium II Xeon and then Pentium III Xeon.

Now the association with Pentium has been dropped altogether. The Xeon processors are usually used in groups of two, four, eight etc. Therefore they are also known as the brains in dual-processor or multiprocessor systems.

Intel has discontinued its Pentium brandwhich was already in the Pentium 4 generation.

As a replacement, it introduced its Core microarchitecture in its new line of processors. That is why we can no longer find notebooks or desktop PCs with the Pentium 4 logo.

The new processors may not run at the high clock speed that Pentium 4 reached. However, as they are far superior in processing efficiency and come with a larger memory cache, they deliver a much better performance.

Certainly, the company is not the only processor maker. Advanced Micro Device (AMD) has been a competitor that Intel would love to kill but cannot due to the need to avoid antitrust legal tangles.

In the more distant past, AMD was considered the second fiddler. However, by mid last year, it was able to up its ante and start to bite into Intel's market share. Intel admitted that it had lost some market share to AMD, but it did not stand still.

Last month in Bangkok, Intel introduced the latest generation of its Quad Core processors - dubbed series 7300. Adesh Gupta, Intel's regional platform architecture manager, presented the features of the new generation to a group of ASEAN journalists. The new processors leave AMD Opteron 2200 processors in the dust, at least for now.

The Quad Core processors are intended for use in a server on a platform called Multiprocessor or Four Socket. This platform, code-named Caneland, consists of the processors and a 7300 chipset code-named Clarksboro.

Keep in mind that Intel is extremely fond of using geographical names for its technology, which can be really confusing.

The 7300 Series Xeon Quad Core server processors, which are code-named Tigerton, come in three wattage levels - 160 watt, 80 and 50 watts. They also come in different ""flavors"". The 80 watt is expected to be sought for mainstream applications.

One of the main characteristics of the new processors is that they have a higher performance level per watt. What this means is that the new CPUs will consume less power to deliver the same processing power. Less energy consumption means less heat to the motherboard and presumably less air conditioning. Therefore, it is quite understandable that the 50 watt Xeon 7300 processors are intended for use in a crowded configuration called a ""high density"" server. Just imagine having a server rack with boxes each containing four or more processors, and you can immediately feel the heat.

These Xeon Quad Core processors are not intended to propel our game PCs, although they might do it if we really want them to. Keep in mind that they are not cheap. The lowest end Quad Core processor runs at 1.60 GHz and comes with 4 MB of Level-2 cache memory, and it costs US$856. The top of the line is Xeon X7350. It runs at 2.93 MHz and has 8 MB of Level-2 cache memory, and it costs $2,301.

These processors are designed for enterprise servers. With each processor having four processing cores, a server with four processors is the same as 16 cores or 16 processors with the older architecture. Now, just imagine if so much power is used in our notebook computer.

It will scream for data, as the current hard disk and other subsystems will not be able to feed it data fast enough. Still, one day it may become a reality.

Also announced during the press briefing in Bangkok last month was the updated vPro processor technology for business PCs. It helps protect our business PCs against viruses, hacking and other risks using highly complicated techniques.

With the technology, we can achieve amazing things like waking up the PCs without running their operating system or starting the hard disk. This will make the task of repairing them easier. In companies with hundreds of PCs, this capability can save a lot of money as the tech support can fix a misconfigured PC remotely.

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