Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/910366
www.postmagazine.com 24 POST NOVEMBER 2017 WORKSTATIONS & PROCESSORS threading as an intricate part. And ironically, the ISVs doing that haven't made any fanfare about it, it has just been a kind of given that any new app naturally would be multi-threaded. The good news/bad news is if a user is stuck with old-fashioned, single-threaded legacy software, the gains from a new processor and GPU are going to be slight. This is due primarily to clock speeds (of CPU, GPU and memory). But very few users are only using one application, and most apps (except some developed in-house) have been upgraded and/or replaced completely with new versions. When you consider the new Intel Xeon SP (Scalable Performance) Platinum series Skylake processors with 28 physical cores, running up to 3.8 GHz Turbo frequency that is capable of two TFLOPS across 56 threads, and then double that in a dual-socket system, you have 112 threads at 3.8 GHz approaching four TFLOPS. It's almost unbelievable. Drop a modern add-in board into the system, such as a GPU designed for compute, and you have a theoretical 16 TFLOPS in a system that can fit under your desk, use conventional wall socket power and doesn't require any extra air-conditioning. Oh, and the whole thing would cost under $15,000. PERFORMANCE AT HAND In terms of performance, benchmarks tell part of the story. Intel will tell you one can get a 300 percent performance improvement over a machine that is four years old (based on best-published two-socket SPECfp_rate_base2006 result submitted to/pub- lished at http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/ as of 11 July 2017), or a 80 percent improvement from the last generation to this one, based on the same data. And that's all true. It just may not apply to you. Every user has his or her own workload, so the best that benchmarks can do is give an indica- tion of what a person might achieve. However, over the years, I have yet to hear of people saying they didn't get their money's worth by getting a new workstation. The math is simple: Do more, or better work, in the same time, and calculate that against the cost of an engineer doing the work. Furthermore, the generational differences are impressive and illustrate what you can do when you make billions of tiny transistors available to computer architects. However, as mentioned above, it's the application of all those speedy little transistors that is the real magic and primary ben- efit to users and organizations. FINAL THOUGHTS Workstations don't break and aren't cheap, so they don't get replaced every year, or even every other year. In fact, they seldom get replaced more often than three or four years, and only then if there is a significant improvement in an application and/or the hardware. Although Moore's law has been fairly predictable over the last 40 years, with the move to 14nm pro- cesses, there is more being accomplished than just clock speedups. With a smaller feature size, more transistors can be stuffed in a chip. When that is done, more functions and faster, wider communica- tions are realized, as well as specialized capabilities such as security, AI and power management. Intel has always been a leader in process technology and, therefore, in a perfect place to recognize and exploit the inherent opportunities of compute density and throughput. The Skylake processor is the latest instantiation of that skill, and the users are the beneficiaries. Jon Peddie is president of Jon Peddie Research (https://www.jonpeddie.com), a Tiburon, CA-based consultancy specializing in graphics and multimedia that also publishes JPR's "TechWatch." CPU TDP (with IVR) Spec Socket Scalability Cores Memory PCIe PCH Entry Workstation Greenlow with Kaby Lake CPU Professional Workstation Basin Falls with Skylake-W CPU Expert Workstation Purley with Skylake CPU Up to 80W Socket FCLGA1151 1S Up to 4C (w/ GT2 & GT0) with Intel HT Technology 140W Socket CLGA2066 1S Up to 18C with Intel HT Technology 70-205W Socket FCLGA3647 2S Up to 28C per socket with Intel HT Technology 2 channels DDR4 UDIMM ECC, SODIMM ECC 2400 2DPC 4 channels DDR4 RDIMM, LRDIMM Up to 2666MT/s DDR4 –6 channels per socket, up to 2 DIMMS per channel RDIMM &LRDIMM support Up to 2666MT/s 16 lanes Bifurcation support: x16, x8 PCH: Up to 20 lanes 48 lanes Bifurcation support: x16, x8, x4 PCH: 24 lanes, 16 ports (6 controllers) 48 lanes per socket Bifurcation support: x16, x8, x4 PCH: Up to 20 ports PCIe 3.0 Intel C230 series chipset (Skylake PCH: SATA Gen3 – 6 lanes USB 3.1 Gen1 – Up to 10 lanes, DMI-x4 Gen3 Intel C422 chipset (Kaby Lake: SATA Gen3–8 Ports USB 3.1 Gen 1–10 Ports, DMI – x4 Gen3 Intel C620 series chipset (Lewis- burg): SATA Gen3 – Up to 14 ports USB 3.1 Gen 1 – Up to 10 ports, USB 2.0 – Up to 14 ports, DMI-x4 Gen3 COMPARISON OF INTEL PROCESSORS PCIe 3.0 (2.5, 5.0, 8.0 GT/s) PCIe 3.0