Can we get some dual core results?

Intel's Nehalem-based Xeons are finally here, and they've left us gasping for air

I had our tech team get prices for a test system, and that left me gasping for air.

> Non-uniform memory architectures (NUMA) have some tricky performance ramifications, not all of which have been sufficiently addressed by modern OS schedulers, even now. The Opteron has occasionally run into problems on this front, and now Xeons will, too. One can hope that Intel's move to a NUMA design will prompt broader and deeper OS- and application-level awareness of memory locality issues.

Intel gets a bit of a free ride on AMD's work there. Really I can't help but feel sorry for AMD, K8 was so far ahead of its time.

Be good to hear Jack and Ubergerbil on the TR podcast...how about it JD?

Yay, the workstation has class again.

That SPECjbb result is just ridiculous -- best absolute performance by a mile, and best perf/watt? That makes for a pretty easy sell when looking to upgrade your server room (assuming you have the budget to do any upgrades, of course).

The really interesting competitive comparison for Gainestown may not be Opteron at all, but Itanium. Clearly Intel didn't make any effort to reduce x86's expansion into Itanium's HPC turf. The much-delayed Tukwila and Poulson now have an even bigger hurdle to overcome in terms of absolute performance, and even if QPI shaves a little off their total platform cost the price/performance numbers are unlikely to look favorable either (especially in these budget-conscious days). Once the Beckton is out, Itanium really is left only with the very large 16+S installations, and there just aren't many of those (especially when you're looking at non-clusters).

Intel wins either way, of course, and most of the Itanium system vendors like HP and IBM have x86 offerings as well, but I wonder if Intel will quietly wind down the line after Tukwila/Poulson stagger out the door into an evaporating niche. Then again, people have been predicting Itanium's demise since before it was born.

How did we end up with a lolcatz picture illustrating the article? Oh, wait, I forgot what day it was.... (It's actually not that day yet in the PDT, which further confused me).

You mention HT3 for the Opteron 2389 in your spec sheet but the Supermicro H8DMU+ doesn't support it. So it's actually running in HT1 mode.

how can you have a "minor" flood - a flood's a flood!

now why am I suddenly reading that as floode (as in dude)?

In my view, despite Xeon 5580 able to easily outperform Opteron, it's still not a fair comparison. The fact that you categorize processor by market price is not actually a technical comparison. Price is base on demand & supply. Being the same price range, Opteron is lower in raw frequency due to manufacturing capability. And I bet after Xeon EP release, the Opteron's price is going to chg again. So I think Xeon with its scalable QPI & HyperThreading, is able to exceed Opteron in same raw freq range by 20-35%.

So Intel has created a fast Lamborghini...what's new? With the market as it is, I feel this chip will have a hard time finding a home. Sure, those that must have it will have it. But most sales, for the foreseeable future, will go to servers that are "fast enough" without the price premium. If AMD can focus on a much better price/performance ratio and deliver less expensive chips that the market deems "fast enough", all of Intel's expensive, raw horsepower may very well loiter on the shelf.

Intel rises from the ashes and raises the bar for high performance computing. As expected, this CPU is a massive leap forward.
Expect Cray, IBM, and HP to soon design and release some super HPC systems around this monster.
Meanwhile, AMD is in massive layoff mode and losing tons of serious talent weekly. It is highly unlikely they will ever successfully challenge Intel again.
I think AMD under Sanders has done a tremendous service to consumers by consolidating DEC and API tech to develop a damn good CPU contender which forced Intel to refresh itself and innovate. The consumers are the beneficiaries.
Unfortunately AMD's new management has destroyed themselves in the effort.
What we need now is a new rising technology star to replace AMD to push Intel to even higher heights.

Also, that comparison of POV-Ray scores to those of 2001 is beautiful. We may have long passed the amount of CPU horsepower ordinary users need, but the astonishing progress continues.

Intel has out Hypertransported the Hypertransport. Amazing!

Not only that, but the triple channel memory controller is also a level above alternatives.
The design decision to support both non-buffered and registered ECC DRAM is a huge bonus. Let the end user make the choice and trade-offs. This is a very intelligent design.

Intel has finally retaken the workstation market. Intel did it the same way as what AMD did with its the original Opetrons which at the time leapfrogged the Netburst-based Xeons.

Intel's two biggest problems with adoption are obviously the uncertain economic conditions and pointy-haired bosses. ;)

I'm curious, that SuperMicro X8DA3 has 2 x16 slots. Does it support Crossfire and maybe SLI?

I wonder how much only having 8MB of cache hurts things. I'd be curious if a bump to 12 or 16MB would improve performance at all, especially with Hyper-Threading.

So, just out of interest, have you tried swaping1366 chips? Does a Xeon run in an X58 board? Does a Bloomfield (especially your engineering samples) boot in a Tylersburg chipset?

So, what kind of minor flood was it?;)

a single-chip quad-core processor with a relatively small L2 cache dedicated to each core, backed up by larger L3 cache shared by all cores. Add in an integrated memory controller and a high-speed, low-latency socket interconnect. Sounds positively.. Opteronian,

Well, no, it sounds Phenomenal. Even though the Opteron nomenclature has carried on, to me something "Opteronian" would be last generation, without the L3 cache or the quad cores. But I'm in the nits, picking.

These things do rock. I got a new Mac Pro as soon as they were announced. It is extremely satisfying to watch all of those cores come to life to attack a problem. And I was really impressed by the gains from hyperthreading -- much more than what I had realized it would be (but maybe that's because my expectations were influenced by the P4).

Nice reference there to the old P4/Athlon scores in the POV benchmark. wow, that one used to take between 10 and 20 minutes to complete and now 30 seconds.

performance wise, it almost follows moore's law 100%.

Will this come in a 4S variety? That could be scary indeed.

Wait, so you're looking for a Nehalem Xeon? Or are you looking for a downside?

#5...Really? I heard up and down about Intel having a 'fake' dual/quad core because they were multi-chip modules and not monolithic. About how bad the Netburst arch was (and it really was) for multi-core computing, etc., etc. Apparently you didn't get the AMD press releases.

Let's not shed any tears for AMD; they're still a huge multi-billion dollar company - and at most price points for consumers and businesses they've got good offerings.

AMD ain't going anywhere, even with second best parts.

That is a seriously badass CPU......uber expensive I'll bet but it'd be nice to own one.
Lets hope the dual cores coming out later this year have some of the same magic dust.

Wow, 11:52pm. Cutting it close! Burnin' the midnight oil on that one!