Thoughts about E7 Xeons

[Lepton87]

With every new generation of Intel CPUs, aprat from RAS features that I don't really know well enough and how much of a benefit they provide, they seem to come ever closer together with core counts and performance getting basically the same and. Let's take a look at Nehalem-EP and Nehalem-EX.
Nehalem-EP offered up to 8 cores at a a MAX TDP of 130W amd the base frequnecy of 3.47GHz with a turbo boost at up to 3.73 GHz and all that for 1650$. Now let's take a look at the high-end E7 platform. Nehalem-EX looks to be a very disappointing CPU release due to a few factors. 65nm process which wasn't suited to go beyond 8 core just like Nehalem-EP.
N-EX
Transistors: 2.3 billion
Die size: 684 mm²

Processor Number E5-4657LV2
# of Cores 12
# of Threads 24
Clock Speed 2.4 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 2.9 GHz
Intel® Smart Cache 30 MB
Intel® QPI Speed 8 GT/s

# of Cores 15
# of Threads 30
Clock Speed 2.8 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 3.6 GHz
Cache 37.5 MB
Intel® QPI Speed 8 GT/s
# of QPI Links 3
TDP: 155W

Now for comparison of HW E5vsE7, as we could see below the new HW-EP just mock the floor with the old IVY-EX. Let's see the new battle. The new EP is absolute beast in turns of throughput: rocessor Number E5-2699V3
# of Cores 18
# of Threads 36
Clock Speed 2.3 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 3.6 GHz
Intel® Smart Cache 45 MB
Intel® QPI Speed 9.6 GT/s
# of QPI Links 2
Instruction Set 64-bit
Instruction Set Extensions AVX 2.0
Embedded Options Available No
Lithography 22 nm
Scalability 2S
Max TDP 145 W
VID Voltage Range 0.65V–1.30V
Recommended Customer Price N/A
18 Cores, that's 3 cores more from the previous EX platform not to mention improvements all around. HW-EX is not yet released but I've heard a rumor that it's going to offer 20 core at the most. I'm the only one to see that EP is catching up to EX platform and surpassing it a lot of the time because it releases earlier. Is E7 really positioned at 4p at beyond otherwise it doesn't make sense at all?

 

[mrmt]

Is E7 really positioned at 4p at beyond otherwise it doesn't make sense at all?

This. Unless you are planning an über 4P or above über servers with plenty of RAS features is that you want to use the E7 Xeon series, if not you are going with the E5 or even E3 for something more pedestrian.

Intel as marketing strategy is steadily raising the bar of 1P and 2P servers in order to erode the need for 4P and above servers. So far this strategy has been working wonders, as IBM and SUN have been reeling with shrinking revenues and market share. AMD also tried to use a 4P strategy in the start of the Bulldozer fiasco, but that approach failed badly on TCO concerns.

 

[Burpo]

"Nehalem-EP offered up to 8 cores at a a MAX TDP of 130W amd the base frequnecy of 3.47GHz with a turbo boost at up to 3.73 GHz and all that for 1650$. "

E5-2699V3 is more than 3 times as much $$$, hate to see what E7's are going for..

 

[mrmt]

E5-2699V3 is more than 3 times as much $$$, hate to see what E7's are going for..

If you need 72 threads to run something, this something is probably far more expensive than the Xeon E5 2699V3, especially if you need to populate 1.5TB of RAM to run it.