Bladewatch.com

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/07/intel_quadcore.html

Let’s admit that most of us are interested in quad-core processors because they’re buzzworthy, and because we’d all like to own a really hot desktop PC. The truth is, where quad is really important is in servers, and that’s why today’s announcement by Intel of its Xeon 7300 Series MP processor (aka Tigerton) is so significant.

That’s because Tigerton will fuel a whole new generation of 16-core (yes, 16!) blade servers from major OEMs like Sun Microsystems. The 16 comes in because the “MP” in the “Xeon 7300 Series MP” nomenclature of the chip stands for “multiple processor.”

In this context, it doesn’t mean multiple processors on the chip, but multiple processor sockets on the motherboard. True, a Tigerton on its own has four cores. It’s also part of Intel’s Caneland platform, which supports motherboards with up to four sockets each. Four cores on each Tigerton times those four Caneland sockets gets you to those 16-core blade servers.

The announcement that we will have more multi-core processors in blade servers will be interesting. One of the things I’ve often had when mentioning blades and VMWare is that they don’t have enough processors, you can’t fit enough virtual machines on the blades – (this can be debated either way), with 16 cores in a blade this might change, though I wonder if this affects the power and energy requirements. A great article, do check it out.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.