Design strategies: wattage advantage of Opteron vs. Woodcrest
Tuesday Dec 05, 2006
Some things to look at when you seen marketing around wattage. You can avoid errors by really looking at total measured wattage when systems running and doing real work. I've seen a lot of Intel marketing about wattage of Woodcrest being 65 watts. But that really doesn't show the whole picture. I'll break it down a bit...
What GHz at what wattage?:First recognize that Woodcrest 2.66 GHz & 2.33 GHz is 65 watts for chip only, but Woodcrest at 3.0 GHz is 80 watts. ...and all benchmarks I've seen is on the 80 watt 3.0 GHz systems.
What about the memory controller?: The CPU isn't everything. Woodcrest designs have an external memory controller. Opteron designs have an integrated memory controller. So you need to add another 30 watts (or more) for the pair of Woodcrest CPUs.
What about the memory technology differences?: The CPU+Memory_controller isn't everything. Woodcrest designs use FB-DIMMs. Opteron designs use the more power efficient DDR2. FB-DIMMS draw a lot more power. In fact, as I've blogged about before, 32GB 2-socket Woodcrest system draws 500 watts! Measured when the CPU is busy. Sun's Opteron systems is way over 100 watts less.
Every IT department I talk to really wants to cut cost out -- power consumption is a growing a major factor in IT costs.
...this just in...
Sun is now shipping a wattage meter with the "Try-and-buy" program for Sun Fire T2000. More details at: http://blogs.sun.com/cohen/entry/kill_a_watt_--_power
