White Papers

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Whitepaper – Balanced Memory with 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon Scalable Processors
© 2019 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Internal Use - Confidential
1. Introduction
Understanding the relationship between a server processor (CPU) and its memory
subsystem is critical when optimizing overall server performance. Every processor
generation has a unique architecture, with volatile controllers, channels and slot
population guidelines, that must be satisfied to attain high memory bandwidth and low
memory access latency.
Memory that has been incorrectly populated is referred to as an unbalanced or near
balanced configuration. From a functionality standpoint, these configurations will operate
adequately, but introduce additional overhead that will slow down data transfer speeds.
Conversely, memory that has been correctly populated is referred to as a balanced
configuration, which will secure optimal functionality and data transfer speeds.
Intel® Xeon™ scalable processors offer a total of six memory channels with up to two
memory slots per channel; a total of twelve memory slots per processor.
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This presents
numerous possible permutations for configuring the memory subsystem with traditional
Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMMs) and Optane™ DC Persistent Memory Modules
(DCPMMs), yet there are only two balanced configurations that will achieve peak
memory performance for Dell EMC PowerEdge servers.
This whitepaper explains how to balance memory configured for Intel® Cascade Lake™
processors within Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, and why this is so critical.