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Intel Pushes Back with Xeon 5100 140

Posted by Zonk from the giving-amd-a-gentle-shove dept.
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Intel's newest chip, the Xeon 5100, which many consider might be the chip that will llow them to stop losing ground to AMD. From the article: 'During the presentation, Intel ran the now-standard comparison test against AMD's highest performing chip, handily beating the system in a speed test. And in a jab at AMD execs, who handed kill-o-watt meters to analysts at the outfit's recent technology day, Intel execs used the same device to measure the new Xeon 5100 system's performance — gauged to be 7 watts better than that of the AMD-based system.'"
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Intel Pushes Back with Xeon 5100 More

Intel Pushes Back with Xeon 5100

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  • Keyword... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by parasonic ( 699907 )
    ...the keyword is might :)

    • Shilling (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This story does not stand up to scrutiny. The power was not measured at the wall were it matters. Also, no one outside of select reviewers running Intel-selected benchmarks have seen this chip. The Intel chip was supposed to ship on Monday but it was only a "paper launch". Intel is only taking orders at this point. I'll wait for objective analysis when the chip is actually shipped before jumping to conclusions about the performance of this chip compares to AMD offerings.

      • "Also, no one outside of select reviewers running Intel-selected benchmarks have seen this chip. The Intel chip was supposed to ship on Monday but it was only a "paper launch". Intel is only taking orders at this point."

        Except, if you use Google, you can find hundreds of people who've used all three Core 2 chips, who have published benchmarks at both base levels and overclocked, including power usage. Furthermore, their "Paper Launch" as you call it is the best they can do; they're already taking orders

    • Keyword: dumping? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by emil ( 695 )
      Here is more discussion [pcper.com]:

      The E6700 we tested here, that bests the FX-62 that is currently selling for over $1000, has a predicted price of $530; nearly half the price!! If Intel sticks with that price, and AMD doesn't drastically lower theirs, the Core 2 Duo line up is going to tear AMD apart.

      There can be no argument that, if AMD were back on the K5 and Intel's lead were comfortable, these chips would never be priced so aggressively. This is designed to erase AMD's market share.

      Since Japan has alrea

      • Can AMD prove illegal dumping?

        No. According to Wikipedia dumping is the act of a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another country at what some perceive as an unreasonably low price. It might however be regarded as 'predatory pricing'.

        But, as both AMD and Intel are highly profitable companies, it would be better described as good old fashioned competition. This isn't going to put AMD out of business; it isn't even going to push AMD into losses. But it might just mean cheaper processors
      • Since Japan has already hit Intel for anti-competetive moves, can AMD prove illegal dumping?

        How can you claim dumping? All chips of a given processor line cost the same to make, regardless of speed. The final speed rating is determined at the very end of manufacturing, partly by chip capabilities and partly by market demand. A processor costs in the around $50 to produce (number pulled from memory of an article I read years ago, so not very accurate, but probably still close enough for this discussion). You
      • Dumping is only if you are selling your product under cost. Intel has big fat profit margins on its chips, and can easily reduce to these prices without falling under the cost.
        http://economics.about.com/library/glossary/bldef- dumping.htm [about.com]
  • Cheap, effective, handy device. Long overdue. I'm very tempted to buy a second one and see what it would take to hack it to broadcast info wirelessly for ongoing monitoring.
  • I wonder how much of these new advancements from both camps in server chips comes from laptop technology. I know that heat dispersion and power consumption have always been very big deals for laptops, and now it seems that the powers that be have finally applied the same thinking (at least) to larger form factor computers.

    • Re:Similar processes? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cyngus ( 753668 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @04:40PM (#15631222)
      There are reasons for this growing similarity, density and cost (somewhat related to density). Laptops have always had to pack more into a smaller space, and heat was therefore a big concern. This concern has come to the server world because of racks and blades. Previously, servers were towers, you stacked a bunch in a room, not very dense, fine. Now you pack a rack full of "pizza boxes" and end up with an oven pretty quickly. Cost, I would say, is a secondary factor. Previously you needed computing power, damn the cost, you had to have it. Now you can have almost more than you'll ever need, so now people want it to not run their electric bill through the roof. Cost is also related to heat, because just expensive as the hardware or electricity needed to run the computers can be the cooling system or electricity to run it! In some sense, server have become more like laptops in their requirements. You'd like them to be small (so you can pack them together, not for transport) and you'd like them to by stingy on electricity (for cost, not battery life).

  • Oh, sweet irony, forgive them! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Doches ( 761288 ) <Doches@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:02PM (#15630063)
    The article is surrounded AMD advertisements! Sublety is clearly not a strong point for BusinessWeek...

  • Road Map (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:03PM (#15630066)
    We are beginning to see why Apple made the jump to Intel.

    It's not that they had anything that was all that much better than IBM or AMD at the time they were making their pitch to Jobs. It was the fact that their immediate future was being prepped with some impressive technology, both in terms of speed and speed-per-watt, which turned the Steve's head.

    • No. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:14PM (#15630176)
      Intel has by far the largest fabrication capacity of any chipmaker in the world. Both IBM's and AMD's fab capacities are much lower (AMD has used IBM's fab to help meet demand). IBM's inability to produce high numbers and high yields led to the Intel switch. Remember the delay in introducing the iMac G5? Apple had the design ready, IBM couldn't produce the chips. Result: months go by without any iMacs to sell. More than anything technical reason, IBM was bad for Apple's bottom line.

      • True (Score:2, Insightful)

        by SlowEmotionReplay ( 822314 )
        IBM was indeed bad for Apple's bottom line, but Motorola was disastrous.
      • Jobs and other Apple representatives have stated repeatedly that the switch to Intel was based on Intel's future roadmap.
      • Jobs wanted custom CPU's at commodity chip prices. I believe that IBM took one look at what Jobs wanted, what he was willing to pay, and said "no thank you".

        SirWired
      • IBM's inability to produce high numbers and high yields led to the Intel switch.
        There was also the small matter of the G5's being power hogs that could never work in a laptop, and the G4's being woefully slow. It was not just production capacity, the PowerPC chips were too far behind.

    • Woodcrest: good processor but not sufficient ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by this great guy ( 922511 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @05:53PM (#15632039)

      Just to recap things, the Xeon 5100-series, aka "Woodcrest", is the very first released processor family that is based on the new 8th generation, Intel Core Microarchitecture, technically inspired from the 6th generation (PPro, PII, PIII), instead of the 7th generation (P4). As a side note, Intel has been using the "Core Solo" and "Core Duo" denominations for some processors but this is just a marketing usage of the term "Core", because such processors are NOT based on the Intel Core Microarchitecture. Anyway, Woodcrest is the first to represent this all-new Intel Core Microarchitecture that is supposed to save Intel from the very competitive K8 design (Opteron, Athlon64...).

      So, Woodcrest seems indeed to be a very good processor, as shown in this preview [gamepc.com] (the less-biased, more technically accurate I have been able to find up to this day). Intel claims that Woodcrest is "80% more performant at 35% less power" compared to the original dual-core Xeon processor, and most benchmarks seem to confirm this claim. It may seem technically impressive, but in fact considering the very poor design of the original dual-core Xeon processor, such an improvement HAD to be expected and was almost a prerequisite for Intel to even start thinking about taking back Opteron's market share.

      Here is a quick fact list I have assembled from my own research and from the review linked above:

      At equal clock frequencies, Woodcrest is about 5-15% more powerful than Opteron on traditional workloads (common x86 and arithmetic instructions), and much more powerful (30% and more) than Opteron on multimedia workloads (mostly SSE, SSE2, maybe FPU I am not sure).

      At equal clock frequencies, Opteron is still much more powerful (30% and more) than Woodcrest on memory-intensive workloads due to its integrated memory controller (leading to better latency) and ccHT links in SMP cases (where memory throughput increases with the number of ccHT links).

      At equal clock frequencies, Woodcrest consumes less power than Opteron, but Woodcrest's memory (FB-DIMM) requires more power than Opteron's memory (DDR400). So overall, a Woodcrest-based system consumes about as much power as an Opteron-based system (as shown in page 3 of the review).

      At equal clock frequencies, Woodcrest is cheaper than Opteron, but Woodcrest motherboards (socket 771) are more expensive than Opteron motherboards (socket 939 and 940) and FB-DIMM memory is twice the price of DDR400. These pricing differences are so large that Opteron is still preferable to Woodcrest in most cases: Opteron is cheaper for any single or dual-cpu server config with 4 GB or more of memory, Opteron is cheaper for any entry-level server config (about $1500 and below) whatever the amount of memory is, Woodcrest seems to only make sense when the high-end processors (Xeon 5140, 5150 and 5160) are used with NO MORE than 4 GB of memory (else Opteron's cheaper memory has a price advantage).

      Of course, in the high-end server market (4, 8 or more processors), Opteron is still the clear technical leader because Intel STILL hasn't switched to a CPU interconnect similar to HT and STILL isn't using an integrated memory controller.

      In conclusion, I would say that when comparing only the processors, Woodcrest is superior to Opteron in many aspects (such as instruction throughput), and Opteron beats Woodcrest in other aspects (such as memory accesses). But when comparing a whole Woodcrest-based system versus an Opteron-based system, other factors come into play (such as price and scalibility), which make Opteron superior to Woodcrest in a lot of cases.

      • Thank you, very informative. What about Xeons with larger caches, though? Available at speeds of up to 3.0GHz, the 4Mb cached (2Mb per core) are priced the same as 3.73GHz with 2Mb (1Mb per core).

        Since there doesn't even exist an Opteron running at 3GHz (at any price), wouldn't such a large-cached Xeon beat the Opteron in both -- speed and memory access?

        I can buy a dual (4-core) Xeon system from Dell right now with 8Gb of memory for just over $5K. Or are those a different kind of Xeon or memory?

      • In conclusion, I would say that when comparing only the processors, Woodcrest is superior to Opteron in many aspects (such as instruction throughput), and Opteron beats Woodcrest in other aspects (such as memory accesses). But when comparing a whole Woodcrest-based system versus an Opteron-based system, other factors come into play (such as price and scalibility), which make Opteron superior to Woodcrest in a lot of cases.

        That's been my take on it. The newer Intel processors have closed the gap (within

  • Duh (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by boldtbanan ( 905468 )

    That said, the results are skewed by the fact that Intel is producing chips using the 65-nanometer process, vs. AMD's 90-nanometer process. Typically, as more chips are packed onto smaller dies, performance improves dramatically. AMD is not scheduled to begin building chips on a 65-nanometer process until later this year.

    In other news, my XBox360 runs way faster than your PS2 =P

    Seriously, can we at least attempt to compare apples to apples on /. instead or regurgitating marketing BS.

    • Are people supposed to wait until AMD makes a 65-nm chip?
    • Sorry I dont follow... are you saying Intel (or AMD) shouldnt compare their newest chips with anything until the other releases a chip after that? Or are you saying it's unfair to compare 90 micron vs 65 micron chips together?

      "Intel has the (apparent) fastest chip out there"

      "who cares, it's on 65 micron, we should'nt talk about 65 micron until all suppliers use 65 micron"

      Just trying to figure out how what you wrote wasn't Fanboyism, please prove me wrong.

      I just hope then that when AMD releases a c

      • Re:Duh (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) *
        Sorry I dont follow... are you saying Intel (or AMD) shouldnt compare their newest chips with anything until the other releases a chip after that? Or are you saying it's unfair to compare 90 micron vs 65 micron chips together?

        I think what he means is that we should compare Intel's not-buyable new chips with AMD's not-buyable new chips. When end-users start taking delivery of Woodcrest servers in, what, August maybe?, then maybe Intel can boast for perhaps even several weeks until AMD's new server chips are

        • Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)

          by vivek7006 ( 585218 )
          A mere 7 watt advantage at the wall despite having started their 65nm transition earlier (AMD waits until they've figured out how to get mature yields before making a rapid switch to the next process node, very unlike Intel) tells me that Intel is going to get leapfrogged big-time in short order.

          Intel isn't getting leapfrogged anytime soon, as AMD is a full 1 year behind Intel in the 65nm race. Intel, on the otherhand will be leapfrogging AMD even firther as their 45nm ramp appears to be happening sooner
          • Intel isn't getting leapfrogged anytime soon, as AMD is a full 1 year behind Intel in the 65nm race. Intel, on the otherhand will be leapfrogging AMD even firther as their 45nm ramp appears to be happening sooner than later

            Too bad for Intel that AMD is going to start producing 45nm chips 18 months after they ship 65nm chips, which is only months away now. AMD will claim the price/performance crown back when they go to 65nm. Then they will catch up with Intel on smaller processes when they move to 45nm.

      • I agree with the parent. Let us not forget that AMD also uses an SOI process whereas Intel does not. So again for use geeks, it may- like another poster argued, be interesting academically but in reality it's a "fair" comparison.
    • the results are skewed by the fact that Intel is producing chips using the 65-nanometer process, vs. AMD's 90-nanometer process

      Intel is miles ahead of AMD in their process technology. It is not Intel's fault if AMD is still stuck with 90nm technology. As of now, Intel's best chip (woodcrest) is better than AMD's best chip (opteron). Accept it, and stop whining like a baby.

      Who knows what will happen in future? AMD may come with a faster chip, and Intel retaliate with even faster chip (Nehalem)
      • Perhaps there is a point to be made that while Intel's manufacturing process is clearly superior to AMDs, given that using the same process, AMD's chips outperform, it might be reasonable to suggest that AMDs architecture is better.
        I don't know that it is, I just consider it a possibility, given the comparison.
  • They may be faster, and they may consume less power, but IT is still about cost. Something tells me, that with this great advancement comes a higher price tag than AMD.

    Who cares is Intel is a few mips faster?

  • Preemptive strike (Score:5, Funny)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:07PM (#15630113)
    "...might be the chip that will llow them to stop losing ground to AMD."

    I'd say the odds of that are llow.

  • Fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ajehals ( 947354 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:10PM (#15630150) Journal
    Now we wait for AMD's next move..

    Now I have no preference in the whole AMD vs Intel debate, I just use whatever seems to give me the most value for money / required performance. I am currently using AMD chips in kit 4 years old or younger and Intel chips in some of my older hardware, and haven't yet even looked at AMD64 or IA64 chips). but it is really good to see some serious competition between two industry giants. Long live the competition, its better for the consumer.
    • "Now I have no preference in the whole AMD vs Intel debate..."

      Me too. Except Intel's love for DRM has me worried. And all this processor X is 1% faster than processor Y reminds me of a classical joke. It goes something like this:

      A science teacher introduces a guest speaker to the class to talk about the Sun. In his talk he says, "The core temperature of the Sun is 15,000,000 degrees". The teacher interrupts and says, "Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?". The guest speaker looks at him dauntingly and says, "
      • Wouldn't it make more sense if he asked if it was Celsius or Kelvin?
        • No, because 273/15,000,000 is a really small number.

          Although 15,000,000 sounds awfully high...
          • What are you smoking? There's no division necessary.

            15000000 Celsius == 15000273 Kelvin == 27 000 492 rankine = 27 000 032 Fahrenheit

            The point of the original poster is that 15M degrees is darn hot, whether it's C or F (or K or r).
    • I really hope you've not been looking at IA64-processors since they go by the moniker "Itanium" and isn't very compatible with x86-processors and are incredibly expensive. I thing you are referring to x86-64, EM64T or IA-32e.. ie the 64-bit version of Intel's common processors, Pentium, Celeron, Xeon, Core Duo and so forth.

  • This is already pretty well documented. (Score:4, Informative)

    by skogs ( 628589 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:11PM (#15630157) Journal
    Intel's products have been worthless for almost 2 full years now. Interestingly, they've been hyping this chip and it's arrival for just about as long. It is a very well documented (and propogandized) release of a superior product.

    Toms Hardware has a review of the New Intel Chips. [tomshardware.com] I know, the page came out a few days ago, but the information is the same, and much of it has been available for many months.

    Toms also has the AMD AM2 Socket [tomshardware.com] and the incremental upgrades on the other side of the house.

    • That actually seems to be a decent marketing strategy. Work on some really big new advance even forgoing some of the research into incrimental processor improvements. Then plan your release for the brand new CPU so your product blows the competition out of the water during that critical gap when a new resource intense operating system (Vista) comes out.
    • AnandTech [anandtech.com] had a preview of the Woodcrest (the new Xeon) processor running 64-bit Linux server type workloads a while back. It compares Woodcrest, Opteron, and the Sun T1. Woodcrest looks quite impressive.

  • great for the market but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fortun L'Escrot ( 750434 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:17PM (#15630222)
    from the article (and missing from the summary):
    That said, the results are skewed by the fact that Intel is producing chips using the 65-nanometer process, vs. AMD's 90-nanometer process. Typically, as more chips are packed onto smaller dies, performance improves dramatically. AMD is not scheduled to begin building chips on a 65-nanometer process until later this year.
    and finally the really important bit:
    "This is going to make AMD's life more difficult than it has been in the last two years," says analyst Nathan Brookwood, head of Insight64, a Saratoga (Calif.) consultancy. "If AMD can respond to this within a relevant time frame, the customers it has recently won may stick with it. If it can't respond with something that can provide the same level of performance and excitement, it could be very problematic."
    besides intel's new server chip, what is really going on is summarized here:
    "NOT JUST ABOUT THE CHIP." In negotiations with big-name customers, Intel also appears prepared to make price concessions to win more system designs than AMD. That sets the stage for what could turn into an all-out price war. "These chips tend to have high price tags and high margins," says Mercury's McCarron. "This is going to change the pricing dynamics. We simply haven't seen server chips sold below a few hundred dollars a unit, but now we're seeing them sold at less than $150. It's a different world than it was a few years ago."
    while i am trying to help avoid any fanboyism that might follow, the above three paragraphs summarize the entire article quite nicely. enjoy.
  • FTFA
    ... the results are skewed by the fact that Intel is producing chips using the 65-nanometer process, vs. AMD's 90-nanometer process. Typically, as more chips are packed onto smaller dies, performance improves dramatically. AMD is not scheduled to begin building chips on a 65-nanometer process until later this year.

    Wouldn't this be an important thing to note? Perhaps later this year would be a better time to compare ... when they both have the same size dies?
    • "Fair" comparisons (like 65nm vs. 65nm) are interesting to academics, but what matters to customers is what you can buy from Intel now vs. what you can buy from AMD now.
      • It depends on the customer.

        Corporate customers tend to do things like plan their purchases ahead of time.

        If the Corporate customer doesn't have a pressing reason to make a new purchase right now, maybe they can sit back for another 6+ months while AMD preps its next chips.

        • If the Corporate customer doesn't have a pressing reason to make a new purchase right now, maybe they can sit back for another 6+ months while AMD preps its next chips.

          Or they can wait another 12 months until Intel starts shipping their 45nm chips (according to the roadmaps). Any way you slice it, Intel seems to be a year or more ahead in their ability to bring die size improvements to their fabrication, but we all new Intel was ahead in that department anyway. The issue is, AMD has thus far been unable

      • The gate size has no real impact on the speed of the CPU.. it may affect the possible speed of it, but no direct impact in and of itself.

        A 3ghz 65nm P4 will be just as fast (or slow) as a 3ghz 90nm P4 (yes both exsist).

        And the new Intel chips are actually running lower speeds (in ghz) than the AMD chips they are beating.

        -Lazn
        • The gate size has no real impact on the speed of the CPU.
          1) you can put in more advanced logic and 2) you can clock it faster before heat problems shut you down.

  • Competition (Score:2, Insightful)

    by spykemail ( 983593 )
    This is how capitalism is supposed to work people - multiple businesses compete in the same market and when one lags behind it begins to lose market share (and therefore money) - then it comes up with its own new product or service to compete.

    That's how you get good products at low prices - comeptition, plan and simple. The thing that is unfortunate with markets like PC and server processors (or even operating systems) is that there are only two major market share holders, and one of them is much larger tha

  • Ah.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theheff ( 894014 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:28PM (#15630304)
    Nothing like a little competition! Whatever brings me faster chips...

  • Does this include... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Thursday June 29, 2006 @03:28PM (#15630306)
    ...gauged to be 7 watts better than that of the AMD-based system.

    Does this include the required Intel Northbridge chip (22W), or are we only looking at the CPU itself? And does the NB need a fan?

    Or is this the entire system motherboard, in which cases this is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.

  • How well does this new chip work in systems with more then 2 of them? How bad will the FSB bottleneck get when intel start using quad-cores with 2 duel cores linked by a FSB? What will socket F bring to AMD? When will we start to see 64 Bit tests? I think amd will be faster then intel in 64 bit mode When will open HyperTransport bring to the server market? What will intel do to beat HTX co-processors cards?
    • Check these 64-bit Linux benchmarks [anandtech.com] and see. They don't have duel cores though, only two dual cores (total of two sockets, four cores). Looks like Woodcrest does pretty good (scaling better than two Opteron 275s in a number of cases).

      The coprocessor stuff AMD is doing is a lot of hot air. Different companies talk about "coprocessors" every few years and nothing has *ever* come of it for the consumer and very few things for the typical IT department. The PhysX coprocessor is the first thing that's come c
  • But the key question is:

    Is this new chip AMD compatible?

  • Details? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NihilEst ( 976138 )
    I read the article at Tom's Hardware. Very interesting.

    But the peripheral requirements -- particularly FB-DIMM -- are interesting, too. And maybe a little scary. Anybody got a clue how these FB-DIMM units are gonna be priced per GB? We haven't seen any details on mobo pricing, either.

    I like the idea of lower power consumption and greater throughput. But if I can't afford to build the system, it doesn't do me much good.

    This announcement does sorta smell like marketing hype; I guess the implementations wil

  • ...shut up about Cars?
  • As long as Intel maintains this architecture, with a single data bus for RAM, PCI, PCI-e, AGP, BIOS, and other integrated functions, they'll be behind AMD. AMD's current (and future) HyperTransport provides a wider, more efficient data path than the front-side bus. AMD's per-processor memory controller scales past two sockets in a way that Intel just can't match. By pushing fully-buffered DIMM's, each with its own memory controller, Intel is ceding the design point to AMD: a single memory controller is t
  • *shock*. As usual, unreleased product from company A beats released product from company B. Feel tree to either do {A,B} = {Intel,AMD} or {ATI,nvidia}
  • Has anyone in the history of commerce ever got up in a presentation and said "our product is not as good as our competitors". I have put off building a new computer and using AMD processors on the prospect that Intel next generation would be better. So, just maybe, Intel is putting out all this press to undercut AMD sales and slow its market erosion. What do you think? I think the jury will be out till some independent testing can be done.
  • Thousands of owners agree: You too should own a Kill A Watt [p3international.com] meter if you don't already. Just please spell it correctly!

    Seriously, I find mine coming in handy for more than just treehugging energy audits. It helped me diagnose a UPS whose charging circuit wasn't slipping into trickle mode, and was damaging batteries as a result. It lets me know whether certain devices will really run from the car's inverter, and once I plug them in, it lets me monitor the inverter's voltage drop.

    What startled me when I first

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