Server Makers Dabble in Dempsey Xeons, Wait on Woodcrest

Published: May 25, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In what is probably the most muted announcement in years, chip maker Intel and its server maker partners began rolling out the "Dempsey" dual-core Xeon DP processors this week into machines based on the Intel "Bensley" server platform. Rather than make a big announcement for Dempsey, Intel has simply put out a press release and launched a site that has a slew of benchmarks for the Dempsey and future "Woodcrest" Xeon DP chip, which is due in June.

Intel has been talking up the Dempsey/Bensley combo as a significant advance for many years, but it hasn't quite worked out that way. At 3.73 GHz, the dual-core Dempsey chip, which is just a 65 nanometer shrink of the current "Paxville" Xeon DP, is too hot and does not offer nearly as much performance per watt as the Woodcrest chip, which was pulled forward on the Intel server chip roadmap when it became clear to the company that rival Advanced Micro Devices was getting traction in the market with power-conscious server buyers. Woodcrest was expected some time in the third quarter, but Intel is rushing it to market in June to try to get ahead of AMD's launch of its "Santa Rosa" RevF Opteron processors. What this means is that the Dempsey chips that Intel can ship today are being relegated to the role as a placeholders to qualify the Bensley platforms being created by server makers. The word on the street is that June 19 or 25 could be the launch date for Woodcrest. So Dempsey gets about a month of practical life.

The Bensley platform, of course, will have a long life, since server makers most certainly are looking for reasonably high volumes of this two-socket server platform. Such two-socket machines are the workhorses of the IT industry. The Bensley platform is based on the "Blackford" chipset. This chipset sports dual-independent buses for the cores running at 1.33 GHz, 667 MHz fully buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) main memory, and an integrated, dual Gigabit Ethernet on the chipset (code-named "Gilgal"). The Bensley platform supports Dempsey, the Core-derived dual-core Woodcrest, and a future quad-core variant of the Core architecture called "Clovertown." A 3 GHz Woodcrest chip can deliver 85 percent more performance than the dual-core Paxville with 35 percent lower power consumption, which is a factor of three improvement in performance per watt.

Intel is offering the Dempsey chip in four variants; they all have two cores per socket, 64-bit memory addressing, HT hyperthreading, VT virtualization, and 2 MB of cache per core. The Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5080 runs at 3.73 GHz, uses the 1066 MHz front side bus, and has a total dissipated power (TDP) of 130 watts; it has demand-based switching activated, which allows it to run cooler than it might otherwise. The Xeon 5080 costs $851 each for those who order 1,000 units. The Xeon 5063 MV is a low-voltage version that runs at 3.2 GHz, uses the 1066 MHz bus, and consumes 95 watts, and costs $369 each in 1K trays. The Xeon 5060 is a variant of this chip that runs at the higher voltage and burns 130 watts; it costs $316 each in 1,000-unit quantities. The Xeon 5050 runs at 3 GHz, has a 667 MHz front side bus, and consumes 95 watts of juice; it costs $177. Intel was planning on putting out a 2.67 GHz part called the Xeon 5030, but that apparently didn't make the cut.

IBM has launched three new System x machines that use the Dempsey processor. The x3500 is a tower or rack server in a 5U form factor that uses the Xeon 5060 chip; it has two sockets on the board, which means it can run a maximum of four cores or, with HT activated, eight software threads. The x3500 supports up to 48 GB of main memory, has eight disk bays, and has a total of six PCI slots (three PCI-Express, two PCI-X, and one PCI). A RAID disk controller comes on the board, and it has hot-swap disks, power supplies, and fans. A base x3500 costs $2,103. The x3550 is a 1U rack server that can use the faster Xeon 5080 chip, but it only tops out at 32 GB of main memory. The x3550 can have four 2.5-inch SAS drives or two 3.5-inch SATA drives, and has two PCI-Express slots with an optional PCI-X slot on a riser. It also has an integrated RAID controller. A base machine costs $1,921. Finally, the x3650 is a 2U rack server that uses the Xeon 5063 (that's the low voltage one with the better thermals but the lower clock speed). This machine also scales to 48 GB of main memory, which means IBM is sacrificing some clock speed to give more memory expansion in a 2U server. The machine has four PCI-Express slots and eight drive bays. A base configuration costs $2,124. All three machines are certified to run Microsoft Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003; Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Server 8 and 9 as well as NetWare 6.5; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0; and Turbolinux Enterprise Server 8.0. VMware's ESX Server 2.5 virtualization hypervisor is also supported on the machines.

Over at HP, the company put out a statement saying that at the end of June it would have the Dempsey Xeon 5000s and the Woodcrest Xeon 5100 processors in its ProLiant DL140, DL360, and DL380 rack-mounted servers, which are the cheapo low-end, the pony 1U, and the workhorse 2U in the ProLiant server line. The company also said that it would have the dual-core Xeons chips in its two-socket tower servers--that would be the ML 150, the ML350, and the ML370--as well as on its BL20p blade server. HP plans to support the same software stack as IBM on its machines. What HP did not say is whether or not the ProLiant G5 machines would really be sold with Dempsey processors. Given that they are coming to market in late June, which is about when the Woodcrests are coming to market, HP isn't planning on selling the Dempseys. There aren't any ProLiants that support Dempsey on its Web site today.

Dell similarly did not announce any Dempsey servers today, but did announce new Precision 490 and 690 workstations that use dual-core Xeon processors, much as HP pre-announced its intent to use these Dempsey chips in its xw6200 and xw8200 workstations a month ago. As far as servers are concerned, Dell is focusing on selling machines with single-core Celeron, dual-core Pentium D, and dual-core Paxville Xeon DP and MP processors.