The time is right now to move from RISC

[#1]

Continuing my series on
moving from RISC to Intel Architecture. This one comes again from Eoin
McConnell with Intel’s Mission Critical Product Team.

Title: “The time is right now to move from RISC”

I'll be up front, I
really don't know what Brittany Spears, Miley Cyrus or Susan Boyle would say
about moving from RISC to the Xeon 5500 processor!. What I can share is the
feedback that I'm getting direct from customers. I'm currently out on the road
and have got some real feedback direct from customers on why they are looking
at migrating their solutions from RISC  processors to Xeon processors.

Over the past couple of
days I have had the opportunity to meet directly with individual customers and
hosted a roundtable with several customers to discuss their plans to replace
their RISC based infrastructure. The conversation has been very open and frank
and has not been about 'should I move' but more focused on 'how do I make the
move'. As could be expected the down economy is placing big taxes on the
ability of IT organizations to support their business units need for organic
growth in a flat to down IT spending environment. A big priority for most of
the customers that I spoke with is how to reduce their overall TCO while still
meeting the increased demands being placed on IT by their business Partners.
Most of the customers are already engaged in active projects to assess moving
from RISC or are building their plans to make this migration.

During the roundtable I
had opportunity to share the latest Xeon 5500 processor performance comparisons
Vs the main SPARC and POWER based solutions out there. There was great
rejoicing and joy (ok I'm taking poetic license here) in the roundtable when we
share some of the results that we highlighted when we launched the Xeon 5500
processor just over 3 weeks ago. So I want to spread the joy and let you read
for yourself the performance and price performance benefits.

We compared the Xeon
5570 processor vs the top UltraSPARCT2+ in a 2 socket configuration. We took
best published results on spec.org and sap (so no funny games at play). The
results comparing best UltraSPARCT2+ vs best Xeon 5500 with 1 taken as baseline
for SPARC redults were amazing

- 20% better
on SAP-SD

- 62% better
java performance for Specjbb2005

- 69%better for integer performance
SPECIntrate-2006

- 75% better for
floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the
cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with
32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are offered at approx $11,000
whereas the UltraSPARCT2+ is at $36,000.

Compared the Xeon 5570
processor vs the top POWER6 in a 2 socket configuration gave even more
staggering results. At the roundtable today customers were amazed. They keep
hearing that POWER 6 has leading performance and more GHz so better
performance. Right?. Wrong is the answer and I noticed many customers
scribbling down the comparisons. Again taking 1 as baseline for POWER results

- 150% better
on SAP-SD

- 190% better
java performance for Specjbb2005

- 126%better for integer performance
SPECIntrate-2006

- 90%better for floating point performance
SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the
cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with
32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are92% less expensive than equivalent POWER 6 offerings.

I only shared the
specific comparisons vs RISC and have not gone into the architectural
advancements of the Xeon 5500 processor and how it addresses real business
needs that have been flagged to us. There have been lots of other blogs out in
cyberspace over the last few weeks on improvements in IO, low latency etc. so
you don't need my 2 cents.

I think now is the time to make the move from RISC, what do you think?