The upcoming launch of products powered by the new Intel Romley platform, which feature the company’s Xeon E5 processors, could make waves in the server sector, according to experts.
While high performance combined with better energy efficiency has long been a selling point for both AMD and Intel in the processor marketplace, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Rich Fichera said that Intel has made the prospect more meaningful this time around.
Although it is hardly a quantum leap, Romley, featuring the company’s Xeon E5 chips, still represents a substantial step forward. What is more, for server vendors that utilise it, Fichera added, the advent of the technology should be a potent competitive advantage.
Combined with the advances that vendors such as Dell, HP and IBM have made on their own, this could be a uniquely attractive time for an update. "My impression is that this is a very good refresh cycle for users to upgrade," Fichera said.
For his part, Otis Lackey, IBM global System x product marketing leader, concurred with the Forrester expert, characterising the performance gains provided by the new Intel product as "even better than expected."
However, he noted, his own company’s improvements – including advanced vector extensions – also contributed to the new heights of performance reached.
"We’ve taken that improvement from Intel and added some innovation of our own by supporting load-reduced DIMMs, which are able to support up to 768GB of memory across most of these systems," Lackey said.
Depending on the workload, users should expect a speed increase of between 50% and 120%, Lackey said.
Regardless of the exact figure, Intel’s new release should have a pronounced effect on the market. According to Fichera, chief competitor AMD could be in for a rough ride in the immediate future.
"This will put a lot of pressure on AMD, and the performance differences. This will give Intel an edge over AMD on a lot of common workloads. Basically, it ratchets up the competition once again," he said.
Romley’s launch has gone partially under the radar as far as Intel is concerned. The headlines relating to the company have been dominated by conflicting reports over delays to another new product – the company’s Ivy Bridge line of processors.
However, if the platform makes a big enough splash, that could change quickly.
IDG News Service
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