Are you ready for quad socket, quad core servers?

[themisfit610]

Hey everyone,

So I was bored earlier and took at look at Supermicro's latest offerings.

http://www.supermicro.com/prod...eon7000/7300/X7QC3.cfm

They have an Intel 7300 (Clarksboro chipset) quad socket board that supports the Xeon 7xxx series, using the 604 pin FC-PGA6 socket. So, that means 4 cores per processor - or 16 cores total (!)

It also supports an other-worldly 192GB of DDR2 FB-DIMM RAM, and 6 SATA ports, 8 SAS ports, 1 PCIe x16 slot, 2 PCIe x8 slots (one x4 electrical), and a 133 MHz 64 bit PCI-X slot.

Integrated ATI ES1000 graphics are standard, as are dual Intel 8257EBB gigabit ethernet controllers.

They have a chassis that's built around this board, in either 1U, 2U or 4U tower configurations. I assume an apropriate power supply is available to feed this hungry beast!

A quick search on Newegg of the required socket 604 pin processors revealed only one option - the nearly $1500 2.4 GHz quad core variant, with 80w TDP. Damned impressive power spec if you ask me, but the price is obscene.

I may be looking to build a 16 core server for work pretty soon (1080p H.264 encoding box that will _love_ 16 cores), so if anyone knows more about the 7300 chipset, running 4 quad cores in general, and specifically socket 604 part availability I would really appreciate it.

I wonder if its x16 slot works with a 9800GX2 ?

Anyway.. it's silly how many cores you can shove in one board these days. Imagine 4x8 core processors when they come out. Wow.

~MiSfit

 

[bunnyfubbles]

4 x 8 core Nehalem + HT = 32 cores and 64 threads...unfortunately this board design only has 1 x16 slot (nerfed to x8 electrical as well) so they're going t have to have a better solution in the future to better support Larrabee so it can be easier to add on one (or four) of those ~16-24 in-order core boards

 

[themisfit610]

Good god. Any word on when Nehalem is coming out?

~MiSfit

 

[krnmastersgt]

Planned for Q4 this year to Q1 of next year. I wonder how long Intel will be the only board maker for those chips.

 

[themisfit610]

Impressive. I think for now quad socket + quad core is the way to go, as long as the boards support drop-in replacement of the quad core chips with octo-core chips.

How many cores does Server 2003 support? I love the fact that I have to actually ask this question!

~MiSfit

 

[krnmastersgt]

Uhh Nehalem = new socket type, so that kills the idea of dropping in an upgrade. Hence the reason I noted that Intel will be the only manufacturer for at least a little while, while the other companies adopt to the new socket.

 

[themisfit610]

Ooooh. Gotcha.

I didn't realize that Nehalem was literally a whole new microarchitecture, like Core or NetBurst. That's a really big deal! Impressive that Intel is making such a big change so quickly. I thought Core would be around in the mainstream for a long time!

~MiSfit

 

[aka1nas]

It's 16 physical cores, not logical.

 

[tomt4535]

HP Has had 16 core servers around for some time. I assume dell and others have them too.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc...4-3328422-3454575.html

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc...4-3328422-3646081.html

Those are only rack servers but yeah they are nasty. There wont be a drop in upgrade for an octo-core processor, but im pretty sure this can handle the workload for some time.

 

[aigomorla]

Hey op,

Dont take this the wrong way.

But someone who has your gear would not be able to afford that board + Rams + Cpus.

Your looking at a system which would topple the price tag of skulltrail right now.

Im guessing somewhere in the range of 15-20G's for this system to get up and live.

Trust me, the 9800GX2's would be the cheapest part in your entire setup for this rig.

 

[Chapbass]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Hey op,

Dont take this the wrong way.

But someone who has your gear would not be able to afford that board + Rams + Cpus.

Your looking at a system which would topple the price tag of skulltrail right now.

Im guessing somewhere in the range of 15-20G's for this system to get up and live.

Trust me, the 9800GX2's would be the cheapest part in your entire setup for this rig.

Re-read his original post. He said it was for work. Something tells me the machine in his sig is not his work machine.

 

[themisfit610]

You've got that right!

The main systems I use at work are 5 Dells - two quad core desktops, and three octo-core severs. We may be making an investment in more horsepower soon

~MiSfit

 

[themisfit610]

Sadly, those HP servers don't have 3.5" hotswap SATA bays, only the nifty new 2.5" hotswap SAS bays. Cool (and honestly a better solution), but we need 3.5" for our 1TB work drives...


~MiSfit

 

[Rubycon]

I can see more use for Server 2008 Enterprise/Datacenter being used as a desktop OS. :laugh:

We need more support for multithreaded apps or reverse hyperthreading.

 

[themisfit610]

x264 encoding will saturate 8 cores doing 1080p with no problem whatsoever. I imagine 16 cores would be no different

More than that? Run two encodes at the same time! No problems here with multithreading!

~MiSfit

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
x264 encoding will saturate 8 cores doing 1080p with no problem whatsoever. I imagine 16 cores would be no different

More than that? Run two encodes at the same time! No problems here with multithreading!

~MiSfit

Yes but it's really limited to a few applications. If that became the majority it could really bring performance to the next level.

 

[themisfit610]

Oh sure, but it's all I personally care about

Other "big" applications are more memory bandwidth / capacity limited (like Photoshop), or as you say haven't been rewritten to go parallel yet. Good things are coming!

Still, VMWare ESX is _really_ cool stuff!

~MiSfit

 

[rsasp]

nice, but are there any actual software will truly utilize 16 cores?

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Oh sure, but it's all I personally care about

Other "big" applications are more memory bandwidth / capacity limited (like Photoshop), or as you say haven't been rewritten to go parallel yet. Good things are coming!

Still, VMWare ESX is _really_ cool stuff!

~MiSfit

basically here is the rules for an enterprise server.

1. Throw everything that you know from a desktop overclocking gaming machine out the door. You got a new set of rules.

2. Server is like a turtle. Slow but steady and surely. Rabits are gaming machines. They run fast, and taste like chicken at the end.

This unit will most likely cost you my original price tag. Your looking at somewhere between 1000-2000 dollars per chip x 4

Then you need to populate all the ram slots because each cpu has its own ram cache. So your looking at 4 cpu's, minimum 8 sticks for a decient machine. Depending on your FSB on the cpu those ram can be anywhere from 100 / stick - 400 / stick.

Now the Next expensive slot. The hard drives. SAS arent cheap. Ask Ruby, she'll tell you everything you would want to know about SAS until each time you see the words SAS you only think of ruby. But expect the drives to start around 200-300 each. Starting price here.

Your not done yet.

You now need a enterprise level Power Supply. Sorry cant use the gold ol fashion standard psu. Looking at around 700 redundant - a 1kw supply. You probably need 2 x 8 pin ATX cords. Few PSU's offer that.

And then you'll need the case to end it all.


Once you got all that, you now offically have a 16core workhorse. Slow, but as i said very stable, and very steady.


Also if you never built an enterprise machine i wouldnt attempt so. Im itching to start one up, but the problem is, if something goes bad, very hard to get spare parts to trouble shoot. Its not like you have FB-Ram laying around, and extra LGA604 Cpu's around.

 

[themisfit610]

Heh... I'm well aware of all those issues.

I would clearly get 8 FB-DIMM modules of probably 2 GB each - not terribly expensive these days. And actually, with several MacPro workstations, it is like we have extra FB-DIMMs lying around Supermicro sells that board with a 2U case and dual 1200W PSUs.

I'm also aware that SAS drives are _very_ expensive - especially at 15k RPMs. I don't need a lot of local storage, just a couple hot swap 3.5" SATA bays to drop a drive in and pull it out when its done. One 74 GB should be plenty.

I definitely appreciate your input, but I think you may assume too much! Just because AT is a mostly gaming / overclocking place doesn't mean the folks here only know about that. I've built high end workstations, but admittedly never a 16 core "workhorse" as you call it Still, I wouldn't call such a machine slow by any means! Especially when it would undoubtedly wipe the floor with any desktop in the office when faced with encoding 1080p H.264 using x264!

~MiSfit

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: rsasp
nice, but are there any actual software will truly utilize 16 cores?

office xp does...my excel spreadsheet opens up .11 nanosecond faster now according to my stopwatch!

to comment on the thread...I've spent the last 10 minutes thinking of how ppd I could get on seti with this machine...and then convincing myself that 4 quads with ip35e's or ds3L's would be a wiser move...mom needs a quad to check her email...and my 6 year old nephew...yeah, he needs to play mickey mouse club house on 4 cores at the same time...

 

[SolMiester]

The biggest enterprise server i have put together is DL380 with 2 x Quad & 16GB RAM coupled with MSA50 DA containing 5 x 146 SAS.

Currently it ran esx 3.5 hosting 7 servers......ESX rocks!

 

[themisfit610]

That's a nice big chunk of metal!

~MiSfit

 

[Phynaz]

Also if you never built an enterprise machine i wouldnt attempt so.

Just the fact that it would be built rather than bought eliminates it from being an enterprise machine.

Companies that run the kind of workloads that these machines are made for don't run their business on home brew computers.

I'm sure you don't want your bank running on the computer Joe Helpdesk built.

 

[Kakumba]

As has been mentioned, quad quad servers aren't exactly new. We have a bunch of them here at work (VMWare servers, database servers). IBM, HP, Dell, all the big players have suitable solutions out there, which if your work was really needing lots of CPU, surely they would get. Or, a certain company nearby has many thousands of opterons for rendering movies etc. in this kind of situation, paying for the certification of product that you get from a tier one partner is worth the money.