Server Makers Are Ready and Sorta Eager for Dual-Core Xeons

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

By being such a staunch supporter of Intel, Dell might have got a few extra weeks to sell the new "Paxville" Xeon DP processors that Intel announced this week. But now the rest of the market can dive in, and Hewlett-Packard and IBM didn't waste any time saying they would support the new chips as well as the Paxville Xeon MPs that are expected to start shipping in November and that Intel previewed.

HP has been pretty enthusiastic about the use of single- and dual-core Opteron processors for its ProLiant family of machines, and HP was quick to pounce on the dual-core Opterons announced in April and shipping in June and July as a means of getting performance and price/performance advantages against Dell's Xeon boxes. (Of course, this also gives the Opteron-based ProLiants the same advantages compared to the Xeon-based ProLiants.) If you ask Colin Lacey, director of platform marketing for HP's Industry Standard Servers unit, how sales of the dual-core Opteron processors are going in the ProLiant line, he'll tell you something that explains why Intel rushed a dual-core Paxville Xeon DP out the door now rather than wait for the much better "Dempsey" dual-core Xeon DP processor that is slated for the first quarter of 2006.

"Dual-core Opteron sales are extremely strong, and ahead of our expectations," says Lacey. "We are seeing a seamless adoption of these dual-core processors by our ProLiant customers." You can see why Paxville is here--to tear out a seam or two.

With Dell growing like crazy and probably enjoying benefits from Intel compared to HP when it comes to chip pricing because it has resisted the temptations of the Opteron processors--you can't prove such a thing easily, but it is hard to believe Intel is not rewarding Dell in some way for its loyalty--HP has to field every advantage it can in its war with Dell in the X64 server space. At the same time, HP and Intel are strong partners on the Itanium chip, and Intel can't push it too far. HP is still the volume leader in servers in the world, and lucky for Intel plenty of ProLiant customers just want to keep on using the Intel chips they know and love. HP's enthusiasm for Intel has not diminished because of the advent of Opteron; if anything, the advent of the Opteron has forced Intel and HP to face some of the hard truths that both were unwilling to face as they were staunch in their support for Itanium as the future--and only--64-bit Intel server platform.

Because the Paxville DP processors plug into the existing "Lindenhurst" E7520 chipsets, which use the single-core "Irwindale" Xeon DPs, putting them into the existing boxes is not a big deal. But you do have to make some engineering changes, and not every vendor is willing to do this on all products for what will probably be a short-lived product. The two-socket, 2U ProLiant DL380 G4 server is the workhorse of the HP server line, and it is the best-selling server in either HP's or Compaq's history, which is why this machine is getting the Paxville DP chip right out of the chute, of course. HP plans to offer the Paxville DP chip in machines that support both the 3.5-inch Ultra320 SCSI and 2.5-inch Serial Attached SCSI form factors (because of the different environmentals and drive shapes, you can't support both kinds of disks in the same ProLiant chassis). HP is taking orders starting yesterday for these machines, but you can't yet order them online.

But HP didn't go whole hog for the Paxville DP, though. At least as far as the chipset is concerned, HP could have technically supported the Paxville DP chip in the single-socket, 1U ProLiant D140 G2 server as well as the 1U, two-socket ProLiant DL360, which use the Lindenhurst chipset. So do a whole bunch of HP tower servers, including the two-socket ProLiant ML150, ML310, ML330, ML350, and ML370 machines. HP could have also presumably put Paxville DPs in its ProLiant blade servers, too. But to do so would have required other engineering changes beyond swapping out the CPUs, and as for these other ProLiant boxes that could, in theory, support the Paxville DPs, Lacey would only say that as Paxville DP volumes ramp, HP could roll out additional machines. But it is more likely that HP is going to keep its powder dry for the future Dempsey/Bensley platforms, which will offer around 33 percent more performance and a much more balanced system because of other features.

As for the forthcoming dual-core Paxville Xeon MP processors, which are expected to run at between 2.67 GHz and 3 GHz with 2 MB of L2 cache per core, Lacey said that HP would initially support these processors, when they ship in November, in the rack-mounted DL580, its workhorse four-socket server, and the ML570 tower server, which is a 6U unit with more room for disks and peripherals that can also be jammed into racks.

HP is telling customers that they can expect up to 50 percent more performance out of the Paxville DP and MP machines compared to the same boxes using single-core Xeons, with the vast majority of customers seeing over 40 percent more computing power. HP's decision to kill off the eight-socket ProLiant server line has mapped exactly to the delivery of four-socket, dual-core designs--and Lacey says that this is no accident.

Over at IBM, the engineers in Big Blue's Raleigh, N.C., xSeries facilities have readied the xSeries 346, a 2U, two-socket server, to support the Paxville DPs. This is a tweaked version of an existing system that uses the Intel E7520 chipset (of course). Alex Yost, who is director of product marketing for the xSeries line at IBM, says that IBM is telling customers to expect about a 40 to 50 percent performance boost from the new chips, and the machine will start shipping now. He also says that the xSeries 346 was designed to have the memory and PCI expansion necessary to support dual-core Intel chips when it was created last year.

In November, IBM is rolling out a 1U, two-socket machine called the xSeries 336 that supports the Paxville DP chip, which is noteworthy in that a base machine with a single dual-core Paxville DP chip running at 2.8 GHz and with 2 GB of main memory will have the same list price as the xSeries 336 configured with a lone 3.6 GHz single-core Irwindale chip and 1 GB of memory. "Customers are going to get more performance right at the get-go, and will have 2 GB if memory, too," says Yost.

IBM has no plans for a Paxville workstation, and is focusing on its APro Opteron-based workstations, says Yost. As for the Paxville MP parts, all Yost would say is that IBM would have very broad support in the machines that employ its own "Hurricane" X3 chipset and that as soon as Intel had it ready, IBM was ready to roll. The xSeries 346 came to market first merely because IBM wanted to go head-to-head with HP's DL380, and prioritized testing and certification on that box first.

Being the top three X64 server makers, HP, Dell, and IBM get all the glory when it comes to announcements, but other vendors have signed up to deliver Paxville DP and MP platforms--both servers and workstations. These include ASUSTek, Egenera, Fujitsu Siemens, Gateway, HCL Infosystems, Kraftway, Lang chao, Lenovo, Maxdata, NEC, Samsung, Supermicro, Unisys, and Wipro Infotech.

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