Intel on its Core Microarchitecture, VT
Intel had a very big stand on Cebit, and the showpiece of the booth was one of the Formula one cars of the Intel sponsored BMW Sauber F1 Team. Unless you were the “Bundeskanzlerin†of Germany, you couldn’t enter the supercar.
Most of the Intel news was already reported in our IDF report. Woodcrest, the server version of Conroe, will have a TDP of 80 Watt. No hyperthreading is available, which is a bit weird considering that the Core architecture is an architecture that depends on extracting high levels of Instruction Level parallelism. Database applications have a much lower IPC than SPEC CPU Integer 2000 and games. Hyperthreading could probably have done more for Woodcrest than it ever could for the Nocona and Irwindale Xeons.
Woodcrest (Core architecture) and Dempsey (Netburst) are pin compatible and it should be possible to replace a Dempsey CPU with a Woodcrest CPU. However, most server manufactures to whom we spoke, are not so sure. Some said that a new PCB of their motherboard will be necessary, while others said it will be possible only on motherboards that have been validated for Woodcrest (not the current Bensley platforms). But who is going to buy Dempsey when Woodcrest is out?
Hardware virtualisation
Intel announced the next generation of Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) for enterprise servers: Intel Virtualization for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d). VT-d adds support for hardware supported virtualisation of disks and others, but it is very unclear when this technology will be really ready. VT-d includes technology such as hardware DMA remapping and works also on the interrupts level. We will discuss virtualisation later in more detail, but it is clear that VT-D will also need to be supported in PCIe, the chipset components and peripherals.
The quad core Clovertown, which is little more than two (dual core) Woodcrests in the same CPU package, will include this VT-d technology somewhere in 2007. Clovertown is socket-compatible with the Bensley (Dempsey, Woodcrest) platform and is slated to ship in early 2007
Itanium ready to take on the RISC competition.
A completely new and ambitious Engineering team in Colorado is up and running and will help develop the future generation of Itanium.
Montecito was on display on Cebit, but besides a few vague benchmarks, little performance data was available.
Interesting was the way the Itanium server with Montecito was designed. Take a look at the photo below. It looks like a rather gigantic 3U case for a two-way dual core Itanium.
It is in fact a 3 u case that can open like two clamshells, with the middle plate having two CPUs at each side. So, you have 4 CPUs, 8 Itanium cores and 16 threads in the same package where there used to be 2-4 Madison CPUs and 2-4 threads.
Each of the two CPUs has access to 8 DIMMs. Montecito is not only a vast improvement compared to Madison when it comes to running typical database applications, but also the platform has simplified quite a bit too.
SAS Everywhere
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is definitely the hottest storage technology of 2006. A SAS host adapter can connect both SAS as SATA disks, so it gives some flexibility and choice between pure performance and/or cheaper and more storage space.
Promise Technology showed the Vtrak J300s, a 12-disk JBOD system, which is an alternative for slow tape backups.
At LSI, I was shown an internal SAS RAID storage rack, but no external SAS storage rack.
What is still missing is the ability to attach a SAS RAID storage rack externally via SAS cables. Right now, you still have to use SCSI 320, which creates a bit of an overhead and limits the maximum bandwidth slightly. Or, you use iSCSI via gigabit Ethernet, but that only creates overhead, and also limits bandwidth even more (gigabit Ethernet = 125 MB/s). The third option is fibre channel, which is still quite expensive. Promise has assured SAS externally attached devices in Q4, and LSI told us that external SAS attached storage racks might be possibly ready in Q3 of this year.
Aimée Boerrigerter (Promise Technology) also drew the attention to the new hardware assisted Fastrack RAID controllers of Promise.
Supporting RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5 and 6 (double the parity and thus, safety of RAID 5), this card allows you to use up to 16 SATA disks with only four connectors on the adapter.
ASUS displays Dempsey, Socket F KFN5 SLI boards
Asus, like Intel and AMD, also believed that a fast car at the booth would subconsciously associate their products with speed and performance.
Remarkable was the fact that ASUS, just like MSI and Gigabyte, is giving more and more attention to the low end and mid-range server market. Kate Chou showed me proudly ASUS’ first Dempsey server with support for SAS disks.
Note that this server is cable-less, which optimises airflow. Asus also had their Socket F KFN5 SLI board ready.
This is a workstation oriented board, capable of running two dual core Opterons and two OpenGL workstation cards in SLI. Notice the extra molex connector for extra power.
MSI K9SDMaster, the newest Opteron Socket-F server board
The people at MSI showed the MSI K9SDMaster, the newest Opteron Socket-F server board.
Thanks to the use of registered DDR-II, no less than 16 DIMMs can be used on this board.
MSI also displayed the first fully working Socket-F based Opteron server, but we were not allowed to boot up the machine and run some benchmarking. Several MSI servers are currently running in our lab, so this is probably just a small postponement. Expect some hard numbers soon…
This new Socket-F server will also get completely new server management software (I-console KVM), which has built-in support for not only remote management, but also remote GUI access (like VNC).
MSI had also several servers for the Bensley platform available, with SAS support. MSI has quite a unique product with the P1-104A2M server (which will be reviewed soon), a P-m Dothan based server, which is small enough that you can fit two of them back-to-back in a 1U rack space. The next release will feature a Core Duo CPU, making the small, relatively silent and power-saving server even more attractive.
It is a pity that we are still limited to two DIMMs. Another application of the Core Duo CPU is turning it into the nerve centre of a hardware firewall.
MSI also showed an experimental notebook on solar cells.
The lightweight coiled photovoltaic panel turns solar power into 12-19V electricity and stores this energy in a standalone separate battery bank. When the portable needs to recharge, you insert that power battery.
Iwill's newest 8-way AMD Opteron monster
Matt Chang of Iwill showed me their newest 8-way AMD Opteron monster. The H8502 can power 16 AMD Opteron cores and can accommodate no less than 128 GB of RAM.
It is a massive server machine, of course, but a system administrator can take this server to a LAN party if he wants; two SLI capable PCI Express x16 slot are available. That is, if he can carry the 80 Kg heavy chassis…
All joking aside, the H8502 I/O board is pretty impressive: 2 x16, one x4 PCI express slot, courtesy of the NVIDIA nForce Pro chipset, and 5 PCI-X slots, thanks to the AMD 8132 PCI-X tunnel.
This monster is powered by a redundant 1350 Watt power supply.
Iwill also showed a very impressive DPK66-S Socket 771 board for Dempsey with no less than 16 DIMM slots for FB-DIMMs, capable of offering 64 GB of RAM space. Most boards are limited to 12 FB-DIMMs.
A Socket-F Opteron solution was also on display.
Iwill told us that ECC buffered DDR-II at 800 MHz will be supported on this board.
However, our sources tell us that the available engineering samples of the socket-F Opteron are not capable of working together with DDR-II 800. So right now, boards that were made to support DDR-II 800 cannot be validated.
A new revision, which is expected to be available to the motherboard manufacturers around mid-April, should solve that. With DDR-II 800, only 4 DIMMs per CPU can be used. Once you lower the memory speed to DDR-II 667, you can use all 8 DIMMs per CPU.
Eleksen to Design New, Innovative Interfaces for Ultra-Mobile PC
Leading Smart Fabrics Company to Provide Peripherals for Cutting-Edge Tablet PC
Leading Smart Fabrics Company to Provide Peripherals for Cutting-Edge Tablet PC
Eleksen Ltd., the inventor and manufacturer of ElekTex® smart fabric touchpads for consumer electronics, today announced it is working with Microsoft Corp. to deliver a range of ElekTex-based interfaces for new Ultra-Mobile PCs. The new peripherals designs include Eleksen’s Bluetooth fabric keyboard and its new USB keyboard. Additionally, Eleksen will unveil a carrying case with an integrated keyboard and a range of designs that go beyond traditional functions to provide rich multimedia controls operated from the case cover itself. The designs include a variety of sensor layouts and control electronics that can easily be integrated into an Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEMs) accessories products and are available immediately.
ElekTex gives OEMs a highly innovative interface technology which supports their needs to develop dynamic and feature rich peripherals for this new mobile computing platform. The designs illustrate how textile interfaces can be integrated into some of the most common accessories and peripherals to extend the ease-of-use and enhance the mobility of these devices creating a new type of peripheral that complements the portability of Ultra-Mobile PCs. With ElekTex, interfaces can be developed into standalone accessories or can be built into protective cases and covers for Ultra-Mobile computing devices.
Club 3D introduces new design, water cooler
Tuners, sound cards...
CLUB 3D is Nvidia, ATI, S3 and XGI partner. Nvidia just added it to its long list of partners. These guys are doing just fine and the business is picking up for them.
It just introduced its way of water cooling the high end cards as it has a modular cooler that fits on X1900XTX. If ATI doesn’t change the memory placing on the card you should be able o use this water block with your next card.
The cooler fits on the X1800 and X1900 generation of cards and you can place it even on the crossfire edition card. Company also introduced the new box design, very clean nice and efficient that tells you exactly what you want to know about the card including the memory buss width.
These guys also have 7900 GTX and GT and are ready to start selling them. We saw rather nice external TV tuners that could be good for laptop users, featuring small aereal and a remote control. The guys also have the sound cards that can support many standards including Dolby digital live.
Socket AM2 might support DDR 3 as well
Very similar, very likely very possible
Very similar, very likely very possible
There is a big possibility that existing socket AM2 CPUs might just be able to support the upcoming DDR3 memory. That is the 2007 marchitecture but we spoke with a few people that believe that DDR 3 specification is so close to DDR 2 that it might just work. It is technically possible, it should be.
AMD or the motherboard manufacturers should do some BIOS tweaks to make it happen but the bottom line is that it could be done.
There is a big indication that DDR 3 ram modules might be identical to DDR 2 ones. So there is a big chance that you will be able to plug the new memory in the old slots. Still knowing how the industry goes we could expect that there might be either the new chipset revision or more likely socket AM2 tweak or re-spin to make the support. We know that chipset doesn’t have to do anything with the memory but Nvidia did introduce MCP 55 a new chipset that will support DDR 2 capable socket AM2.
Albatron has G965 motherboard
Conroe, DDR2 800+ supported
ALBATRON has a design of a possible great selling board. It is based on new G965 chipset and that chipset has the latest IGP core inside. It is branded as GMA, Graphics memory marchitecture. We learned that this core can support Vista aero glass graphic engine but we would still like to see it to believe it.
The upcoming Conroe generation is also supported so this chipset might have some product life after all, it won't just be disappeared and replaced in autumn time when Intel gets ready to introduce its new CPU's.
The board will also support all the CPU's up to FSB 1066, it will also support dual channel DDR 2 memory up to 800 MHz or faster and will come with 16X PCIe graphic slot and a 1X PCIe slot. The board has Gigabit LAN, Realtek 8 channel audio card six SATA 2 ports and IDE raid.
AMD AM2 integrated board spotted
Nforce 6150 + 430
Nforce 6150 + 430
NVIDIA is very loud about its H.264 support and capabilities. It claims that even its chipsets such as the integrated Nforce 6150 can support 720i HDTV resolution.
It turns out that Nvidia actually has a socket AM2 integrated solution ready and is ready to showcase it. The board design seams to be finished but Nvidia and Foxconn have to wait for AMD to present its AM2 CPUs.
The board features DVI out so you can even connect your digital monitor directly to your board.
Watercooled XBox360 Shuttles onto mortal coil
Asetek Waterchill Micro
ASETEK SHOWED OFF the latest in a line of small and quiet coolers, the Waterchill Micro. This self-contained unit is a stylish CPU block (It looks like a small pod-people landing ship), tubes and a radiator/fan combo, no assembly required. The interesting thing is what they showed it on. There were three systems with Micros in them, the standard Alienware system, a Shuttle box and an XBox 360.
Shuttle is known for its innovative use of coolers and heatpipes, it pioneered the SFF box, so what more does it need? Low noise for one, some of the Shuttle boxes are bordering on noticeable sound levels. The point behind the Micro is not insane overclocks but removal of heat quietly.
Asetek seems to have hit this mark, with two caveats. One is the at the Micro is currently a prototype, so is probably a bit bigger than a fully finished unit. Because of this, the sharper eyed among you may notice the radiator is sitting on top of the PCIe slot, IE sub-optimal placement. The other issue is where it vents out, again, sub-optimal, but far from final.
Both of these things will be worked out in engineering, and the idea of a water cooled shuttle is an intriguing one. Imagine if they wind one tube through the custom PSU, long the Achilles heel of the SFF boxes, can you say higher power density?
The more intriguing concept is the water cooled XBox360. This is another long overdue idea, the little white blast furnace is a case study for cooling errors, and a small water cooler could do wonders for it. Microsoft would probably have many fewer headaches if they did this from day one.
Waterchill Micros are a great idea, unfortunately they are a few months away from full production. A small, in-case cooler like this straddles the line between a full external monolith and a standard HSF setup. It removes more heat than a high speed fan, puts out less noise, uses little power, and most importantly, is self-contained. What more do you need?
EVGA has mATX SLI motherboards
OEMs want it
THERE is a huge demand for a micro ATX Nforce 4 SLI board. EVGA made one or should we perhaps say that EVGA's motherboard manufacturer made one for it.
So you can expect that guys such as Alienware, Voodoo PC or NW Falcon are going to take these boards and make a small systems based on them. People do like the small and nice cases and those guys want to offer it.
The board uses Nforce 4 SLI chipset and it has three PCIe graphic slots. In a reality if you use the single one in the middle you get the 16X speed out of the slot while when you use two other slots in SLI you get 8X each speed.
You can expect to see the small SLI systems from those companies with a EVGA motherboard in next few weeks.
Tyan brings supercomputing to the desktop
Four blades in a stylish box
Four blades in a stylish box
Every so often there comes a genre-bending product, and Tyan has one of those on its stand at CeBIT this year. It is called the Typhoon PSC or Person Super Computer, and is aimed at the scientific and HPC set. Typhoon PSCs come either Opteron or P4/PD flavours, and brushed aluminium or black finish.
There are two PSCs, the Opteron one is the B2881YDS4T and the P4/D model is the B5160YDS4T. Both are basically four dual socket blades in a box with all the necessary cables and attachments in a nice aluminium case. It also has little wheels and two carry handles which I have personally tested to get the rear shot here.
The specs vary between the models a bit, but there are eight sockets and up to 16 cores on either one, depending on how you want to set up the system. The Opteron can handle 64GB of memory, 32 for the Pentium. There is one S-ATA drive per blade, and they are coupled through GigE on the back. Each blade has an independent 350W PSU for a total of 1400W, which fits nicely in the 1500W most circuits can provide.
The big problem here can be cooling. If you have ever turned on a modern P4 rack server, it sounds like a Harrier taking off, and usually does suck for nearby small animals. This one is really quiet, so quiet that I could not hear it over the fairly low show floor noise until I stuck my ear up to the grill.
Tyan has solved all three of the problems to putting fairly massive compute power in a form factor that dings your shins every time you put your feet under your desk. Most people in the target market would be more than happy to pay that price to avoid time sharing on big clusters, that much is a no brainer.
These boxes are the first stab at a new class of machines, they do what they say, and do it quietly. It would not surprise me to see the next version of these boxes with an integrated KVM and Infiniband or other high speed interconnect in back. For now though, the 'problems' are relatively minor, and the solved problems are relatively major. It is a good start to a new category, and one that will undoubtedly get better in time.
dunno why. 