Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series


The news -- Intel Corporation introduced 17 enterprise-class processors today led by the Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 series. It is Intel's most revolutionary server processors since targeting the market with the Intel® Pentium® Pro processor nearly 15 years ago. The chips can automatically adjust to specified energy usage levels, speed data center transactions and customer database queries, and will play a key role in scientific discoveries by researchers who use supercomputers as their foundation for research, all while delivering great energy-efficiency for reduced electricity costs.

The context -- The Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series represents a new era in computing. Intel helped spark the Internet revolution with the Intel Pentium Pro processor. Featuring new levels of intelligence and versatility, the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series will usher in an exciting era of innovation and discovery by enabling customers to tap new growth markets such as cloud computing, high performance computing and embedded systems.

Why it matters -- As use of the Internet expands towards Intel's vision of 15 billion connected devices, the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series will also power an upcoming transformation for the Internet's infrastructure. The high-tech industry has rallied around a goal to run applications from optimized processors and computing hardware, which are available on demand and scalable to the masses. Often called cloud computing, this vision could flourish due to the adaptability, capability and intelligence of the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series.

"The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series is the foundation for the next decade of innovation," said Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "These chips showcase groundbreaking advances in performance, virtualization and workload management, which will create opportunities to solve the world's most complex challenges and push the limits of science and technology."

"Nehalem is a game changer in just about every way, especially performance. It overcomes most, if not all, the potential performance roadblocks associated with multicore configurations. It creates a foundation for future processors, and it resets performance expectations, especially for applications requiring high I/O or memory bandwidth." -- Jim McGregor, Industry Analyst, InStat .

"The London Stock Exchange recognises the importance of both low latency and latency consistency in the operation of efficient markets. We make extensive ongoing use of the Intel fasterLAB in order to evolve our core business applications and to test the effect of processor-level innovation. We have been able to see the immediate impact of the move to 45nm and scaling to the multi-core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series and beyond. The fasterlab – being equipped with advanced testing facilities and Intel engineering expertise – is a significant asset to our ongoing software development programs." -- Robin Paine, Chief Technology Officer, London Stock Exchange .

"As one of the world's largest business and IT consultancy firms, Capgemini is asked by its clients to consult on improving their business performance while reducing costs. One of their primary concerns is the power consumption in the data centre. Capgemini evaluated the new Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series because the promised performance per Watt could help our clients reduce their concerns. Capgemini noticed an enormous performance increase up to 500%, while the power usage dropped a staggering 65%. As an example queries to a Microsoft SQL* database took just ten seconds, compared to three minutes on a previous generation Intel® Xeon® processor. Even older applications, not designed for multi-core processors are no challenge for this processor. The time for login sequences, went back from 40 seconds to just five. For Capgemini it is without doubt that this processor provides customers with increased performance while reducing energy costs." -- Arnold Verhoeven, Managing Consultant, Capgemini, Netherlands .

"Based on our benchmarks of the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series, we expect an increase in performance-per-Watt of about 30% or more, compared to the already very power-efficient combination of the previous generation Intel® Xeon® processors and the Intel 5100 (San Clemente) chipset. The new CPU is a strong candidate for highly demanding Physics applications." -- Helge Meinhard, Coordinator for Server and Storage Procurement at CERN-IT
"It is a challenge to build a high performance computer that suits the different demands of our many research groups. Our new Sun* blade cluster powered by Intel® Xeon® processors 5500 series is a very well balanced system, tuned to highest performance. With 12 TB memory, a quad data rate Infiniband network and 160 TB fast parallel file system, we will be able to satisfy most of our users' demands for the next three to four years. The Sun* blades with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series also satisfied our energy consumption and TCO demands. Compared to our five-year-old cluster, the new platform provides more than 10 times the compute power for less than three times the energy consumption." -- Alexander Godknecht, CTO IT Services, University of Zürich .

"The European Space Agency (ESA) has recently been testing brand new systems based on the innovative new Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series. Its unrivalled performance enables ESRIN, the ESA establishment in Frascati, Italy, to analyse and share large volumes of data collected by its satellites more quickly and efficiently via its Grid computing infrastructure. Early tests revealed that the new processor technology has reduced critical computational time, for example as requested for mapping of large flooded areas, by 50 percent." -- Luigi Fusco, Senior Advisor of Earth Observation Applications and GENESI-DR project coordinator at ESA .

Source from : INTEL

Computer



A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.

Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century (1940–1945). These were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers (PCs).[1] Modern computers based on integrated circuits are millions to billions of times more capable than the early machines, and occupy a fraction of the space.[2] Simple computers are small enough to fit into a wristwatch, and can be powered by a watch battery. Personal computers in their various forms are icons of the Information Age and are what most people think of as "computers". The embedded computers found in many devices from MP3 players to fighter aircraft and from toys to industrial robots are however the most numerous.


The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile, distinguishing them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore computers ranging from a mobile phone to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks, given enough time and storage capacity.

The first use of the word "computer" was recorded in 1613, referring to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued to be used in that sense until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century onwards though, the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, describing a machine that carries out computations.[3]

The history of the modern computer begins with two separate technologies—automated calculation and programmability—but no single device can be identified as the earliest computer, partly because of the inconsistent application of that term. Examples of early mechanical calculating devices include the abacus, the slide rule and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150–100 BC). Hero of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD) built a mechanical theater which performed a play lasting 10 minutes and was operated by a complex system of ropes and drums that might be considered to be a means of deciding which parts of the mechanism performed which actions and when.[4] This is the essence of programmability.

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