The E5 series should also spur adoption of 10 GbE by lowering the cost and improving the efficiencies of networking products such as the Ethernet Controller X540, said Sunil Ahluwalia, director of the LAN Access Division at Intel. "Until now, the cost for 10 Gig has been ... a reason why the [sales] volumes haven’t really taken off as a hockey stick. But we believe that with this solution we can lower the cost."
The X540 design is unique in that it combines a media access controller (MAC) and a physical access controller into one chip. Previously, with one controller to a processor, the processor would draw 10 watts of power. But with two controllers combined, this new processor draws only 12.5 watts, he said.
Because of performance, security and efficiency improvements that the E5 family brings to servers, storage and networking, the new processor should spur a new round of server refreshes throughout the industry, said Diane Bryant, VP and general manager of the newly created data center and connected systems group at Intel. Just one month on the job, when she was stumped by one question at a news conference Tuesday, she joked, "I need a lifeline."
The 80% improvement in performance, coupled with the I/O improvements and other pluses, also mean data center managers will be able to run more virtual machines on each physical server, although Bryant said exactly how many more would depend on variables such as the type of workload involved.
Nonetheless, the new processors should hasten server refresh projects to deliver cloud-scale computing, she said. "You don’t do [cloud] on old hardware because the first step in delivering a cloud environment is virtualizing. You virtualize your applications and then automate on top of the virtualization, and you’re not going to want to do that on old hardware," Bryant said.
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