IDF Beijing Highlights
- Intel is run away leader of the microprocessor market
- Adds storage, graphics and network elements to compute
- Steals a march by introducing the Atom 1200 series in cartridges for microservers
- Will continue to shrink Xeon E5 and E7 chips to 22nm in 2013
- Will introduce the ‘Haswell’ Xeon E3 in July
- Illustrates moves away from the traditional OEM model and Big Data automation in Chinese user activities
Intel’s Lisa Graff gave the keynote presentation at the IDF in Beijing this week. You’ll want to learn more about her company’s data centre and server announcements for the coming year. We believe that form factors for servers count and will be updating our post to include cartridges in the next few weeks.
Covering The Waterfront
Intel is by far the market leader in the microprocessor market – so much so that we have to use a logarithmic scale to compare it with other vendors in our quarterly view of revenues (Figure 1). Despite its small revenues ARM’s progression is significant as it only licenses and doesn’t manufacture chips itself. Intel’s processor strategy has been to take a large slice of data centre spending by incorporating increasing functionality, including storage controllers and networking elements alongside compute.
New Micorprocessors
At IDF Intel has announced upgrades to its Atom and Xeon E3 and E7 chips, but not the Xeon E5 in Beijing. In particular:
- The Atom 1200 family – this is a 2nd generation SoC built on Intel’s 22nm processes; it announce that the new Silvermont micro architecture is available in samples, with full availability planned for the second half of 2013; it also announced the ‘Rangeley’ SoC for network devices; we note that HP has already launched its first Moonshot cartridge based on the 2.0GHz Atom S1260 – so Intel has stolen a march there on ARM, where moving from 32-bit to 64-bit is a migration challenge; the new S12x9 product family – already available – is designed for storage and has up to 40 lanes of integrated PCIe 2.0
- Xeon E3 – available mid-2013 this ‘Haswell’ chip will be low-powered starting at 13W; Intel will integrate graphics with processing on the chip; Intel will also launch a media Software Developer Kit (SDK) for Linux and Windows; again this chip is based on a 22nm process
- Xeon E7 – Intel will launch the ‘Ivybrige-EX’ version in Q4 2013, increasing memory capacity by 3 to a maximum of 12TB in 8 chip configurations; it has also indicated that it will add its Run Sure technology to improve resilience; this chip is important for extending the in-memory capacity of SAP HANA systems; currently the E& is the only chip certified for use in HANA appliances; in our briefing it indicated it is working hard with SAP – so we assume the new chips will be quickly incorporated once available
In addition Intel reminded us that the 22nm ‘Ivybridge-EP’ version of the Xeon E5 will arrive in Q3 2013, improving its energy efficiency significantly. The cost of moving to the 22nm process cost Intel $9 billion in 2011 – difficult for other fabricators to match.
The New Microserver Architecture
Like HP Intel sees the need to develop microservers – part of the evolution from traditional and blade serversThe ability to increase server density significantly will lead to some tremendously large numbers of processors in a single rack – HP’s Moonshot starts at a maximum of 450, with the promise of 1.8k once quad chip cartridges become available. As always with new form factors, the question of what workloads will run is important to address. Again HP has decided to go after the hosting market initially, but is promising to expand with regular updates through new partner activities. Microservers are an important step in the miniaturisation of processing to the point at which servers, storage and networking devices can be housed in cartridges as opposed to blades, racks or older form factors (see Figure 2).
Intel In China – Scorpio And Other Projects
In China Intel announced that it’s been working with 4 large Chinese service suppliers – Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and China Telecom on its Scorpio project to develop an Open Rack concept – unlike the new cartridge-based systems, this design uses blades. The modular design has 6 sub-systems (rack, node, fan, power and management network); it manages power and cooling through centralised management software, controls asset positioning and management through GPS and uses plug-and-play connections for all blades. It shares the ease and centralisation of management concepts with many new integrated systems (IBM PureSystem, Oracle Exadata, Cisco UCS for instance), which may well help in a country with comparatively low skill levels in server administration; however it is definitely not designed as a single SKU – rather it will be possible to grow from a relatively small to large system through upgrades.
As with AMD’s Open 3.0 motherboard developments, Intel is working directly with these customers to design a single vendor-independent system with the lowest possible TCO. It will be interesting to see how many of these systems will be deployed once the design process is complete of course.
Intel uses Bocom’s traffic monitoring and management system in China as an example of its Big Data play. Each roadside camera produces 2PB of video data a day, which is compressed and streamed back to Xeon E5 systems in the police station. Intel claims that an accurate search of a license plate takes only 1 second. Bocom’s system is used for traffic management, including monitoring violations and co-ordinating emergency services. This is a clear example of how machine-to-machine information gathering can be incorporated into Smarter City applications.
China Mobile has updated its billing system, replacing its IBM Power servers with a Xeon Hadoop system to launch a self-service portable for its subscribers. The system handles 300k records per second, which creates 35B of data, totalling 90TB per month. According to Intel the new system is 30 times faster than before and allows China Mobile to sell its subscribers more things through the portal.
Also in China Intel announced its new Cloud Innovation Center – designed to give users access to its latest technology and solutions specialists and to enable users and developers to deploy projects more rapidly.
Some Conclusions – Tick, Tock, Density And Power
So for the rest of 2013 Intel will continue to shift Xeon E5 and E7 chips to 22nm (a ‘tick’ in its strategy), while the Xeon E3 will be the first ‘Haswell’ processor (a ‘tock’). We believe it has gained an important march in supplying the first production microserver cartridge chips, mainly by avoiding the knotty transition from 32-bit to 64-bit ARM suppliers are going through. It has some strong case studies in China which show it is moving beyond the traditional OEM model by working directly with large users to design plug-and-play integrated systems in its Scorpion project and incorporating machine-to-machine information in automated systems. It has good plans in place for increasing server density and lowering the power rating of its machines. We shouldn’t forget that, as a chip designer, Intel has to plan its product road map for 7 years time – who knows what our data centres will look like by then!