User Manual

Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series Overview
Features Benefits
Intelligent Performance
• Delivers up to 2.25x performance improvement within a power envelope similar
to previous processors.
35
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology
• Boosts performance for specific workloads by increasing processor frequency.
Intel® QuickPath Technology
• Delivers up to 3.5x bandwidth improvement for data-intensive applications.
36
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology
†
• Boosts performance for parallel, multi-threaded applications.
Larger memory capacity
• Up to 144 GB of main memory supports higher performance for data-intensive applications.
Shared L3 cache
• Boosts performance while reducing traffic to the processor cores.
Automated Energy Efficiency
• Reduces server idle power consumption by up to 50 percent versus the previous generation
of two-socket server processors.
37
Integrated Power Gates
• Allows idling cores to be reduced to near-zero power independent of other cores.
Automated Low-Power States
• Puts processor, memory and I/O controller into the lowest available power states
that will meet the requirements of the current workload.
Flexible Virtualization
• Enhances virtualization performance by up to 2.1x.
38
Processor
• Hardware assists boost virtualization performance by allowing the OS more direct
access to the hardware.
• Intel® VT FlexMigration enables seamless migration of running applications among
current and future Intel processor-based servers.
• Intel® VT FlexPriority improves virtualization performance by allowing guest OSs
to read and change task priorities without VMM intervention.
• Extended Page Tables (EPT) provide better performance by reducing the overhead
caused by page-table utilization of virtual machines.
Chipset
• Enables directly assignable I/O to Virtual Machines, helping speed data movement
and enhancing performance.
Network
• Delivers up to 2x throughput improvement
39
with extensive hardware assists to I/O devices.
What is the 5000 Sequence?
At Intel, our processor series numbers are intended to help clarify processor features, capabilities and intended usages.
Intel offers four processor number sequences for server applications:
Intel® Xeon® processor 3000 sequence
One-processor servers for small business, entry, or first server,
based on the Intel Xeon processor.
Intel® Xeon® processor 5000 sequence
Two-processor general-purpose, standard high-volume servers,
HPC systems, and workstations based on Intel Xeon processors.
Intel® Xeon® processor 7000 sequence
Greater performance and scalability with 4- to 32-processor enterprise
servers. These processors are designed for virtualization and data-
demanding enterprise applications.
Intel® Itanium® processor 9000 sequence
Maximum scalability and RAS features for mission-critical workloads
with 2- to 512-processor servers based on the Intel Itanium processor.
10