Intel Xeon 5600 "Westmere" Launched!

No matter which Intel Xeon processor you select, you can be assured of solid performance. With the March 16th announcement from Intel of their new "Westmere" Intel Xeon 5600 series, they have raised the bar even further. With this new processor, Ace can offer over 1 TFLOP of compute performance in a compact 4U environment! The 5600 is compatible with all systems currently utilizing (or projected to use) the Intel 5520 chipset. This enables Ace to offer the 5600 series immediately, as both an upgrade for existing systems, as well as a new level of performance for systems about to be fielded. Additional details are included below:

The Xeon 5600 is a "shrink" of the Xeon 5500 processor using the 32 nanometer fabrication technology. This new technology enables a boost in the processor performance by increasing the clock speed, cache size and other features. Perhaps more significantly the shrink also allows the highest performance processors (e.g. the 2.93 GHz Xeon 5670) to have six cores (the previous generation, "Nehalem", had four cores). Hence, Ace can offer a 4U solution that can now have up to 96 processors and achieve over one TFLOP in a highly dense configuration (4 FLOPs per clock X 2.93GHz X 6 cores per processor X 2 processors per blade X 8 horizontal hot plug blades per 4U Double Quad Twin chassis). A TFLOP of compute power is a significant milestone for Ace. No longer is a large data center required for a TFLOP of performance! Ace can provide various HPC configurations using the latest 5600 series, including small self contained rack enclosures (or traditional Tower configurations) that are conveniently located next to your desk!

The Xeon 5600 processors will be available in eight different versions, ranging from the Xeon L5630 (2.13 GHz, 4 core, 80W) to the X5670 (2.93 GHz, 6 core, 95W). The processor price and power consumption is the same when comparing the Xeon 5600 to the equivalent generation Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) processor. Maintaining the same price level means Ace can offer a significant boost in price/performance for those who had already established their budget based on Nehalem.

As noted, for several of the processor options the number of cores per processor will increase from four to six. This is a 1.5X increase in peak performance. The actual performance will depend on the application. Most HPC workloads will see between 1.2X to 1.4X throughput increase using the 6 core processor versus the 4 core. With the increase to six cores per processor (12 cores per blade) it is recommended to consider an increase in memory and disk space per blade in order to keep a balanced compute environment. For example, many application vendors recommend 2 GB of memory per core.

For years a TFLOP of compute power has been a significant HPC milestone. Ace is very pleased to offer this level of performance in a 4U package, or other exceptional form factors!