Server Trends

1. Server Trends Daniel Bowers daniel.bowers@gartner.com @Daniel_Bowers

2. Agenda • Server Trends • Performance • Power Efficiency • Price • Pizzabox Performance Trends • Subsystem Trends • CPU • Memory • Power • Other Trends

3. Server Performance Trends, 2007 - 2012

4. Server Performance Trends, 2007 - 2012 Same chart, but logarithmic scale

5. Comparing Trends vs. Moore’s Law Moore’s Law is one of these 3: Transistors on a chip double every 2 years Transistors on a chip double every 18 months Chip Performance doubles every 18 months

6. Server Performance Trends, 2007 - 2012

7. IDEAS TRENDS: PERFORMANCE Server Efficiency Trend, 2007 - 2012 6

8. IDEAS TRENDS: PERFORMANCE Server Efficiency Trend, 2007 - 2012 Same chart, but logarithmic scale 7

9. IDEAS TRENDS: PERFORMANCE Server Efficiency Trend, 2007 - 2012 Testing Koomey’s Law 8

10. IDEAS TRENDS: PERFORMANCE Server Price Trend, 2007 - 2012 9

11. Pizzabox Performance Trends

12. 2-socket x86 server performance in the last decade 100-fold increase Source: Gartner RPE2 for select HP ProLiantDL360 generations

13. Server Trend: 2 socket x86 “rack” servers HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 (2012) HP SystemPro/33 (1989) Photo source: Wikipedia Data Source: Me

14. Server Trend: 2 socket x86 “rack” servers Internal Disk Capacity Memory Capacity Clock * Cores Memory Bandwidth HP SystemPro/33 (1989) Photo source: Wikipedia Data Source: Me

15. Server Trend: Just for Reference

16. CPU Trends

17. CPU Frequency Server CPU Frequency by system announcement date, 1998 – 2012 Not including mainframe, GPUs, and other outliers MHz

18. 4-Chip Server Performance by Architecture Slide Redacted from Copies

19. 4-Chip Server Performance by Architecture Itanium Opteron Xeon SPARC POWER Performance (RPE2, log scale) Xeon, SPARC are moving averages Itanium, Opteron, POWER are power trends

20. x86 Processor Prices Today, Intel accounts for ~90% of x86 server CPU shipments, down from ~70% in 2006 Performance-per-dollar is capped by technology but set by competition

21. CPU Trends More stuff on chip More and faster memory channels I/O interfaces (e.g. PCIe) Accelerators (e.g. Encryption, Decimal Floating Point) On-chip GPUs and vector engines Processor power modes Control at individual core level Control for uncore Additional low-power states “Turbo” modes Frequency, voltage scaling GPUs in servers Hyperscale Computing

22. HyperscaleComputing Energy-Efficient Servers / Microservers x86 and non-x86 Vendors building server ARM ecosystem GPU & vector processors Robust user base for specific apps Very different power efficiency curves Optimized for energy per transaction Will consume X % of server market Ask 3 experts, get 4 values of “X” • Quiz: ARM & MIPS processors are already in your data center. Where??

23. Intel Public Roadmap for Itanium & Xeon Source: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/roadmaps/public-roadmap-article.pdf

24. Oracle Public Roadmap for SPARC Source: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/public-sparc-roadmap-421264.pdf

25. IBM Roadmap for POWER Source: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/es/resources/01_2012_Power_roadshow_Power_Systems_overview.pdf

26. Memory Trends

27. Memory Trends Per-DIMM capacity rising Explosion of DRAM DIMM options to choose from Memory power overtaking CPU power Other trends Fixing memory bandwidth gap: Memory compression techniques Direct-to-Memory CPU bypass techniques Addition of flash tier below DRAM In-memory computing What happens next? DDR4, 3D chip stacking, PCM / MRAM / memristers

28. Why You Don’t Need more DIMM slots Source: HP

29. Reset your DIMM standards quarterly! • Different options to optimize capacity, price, power, throughput • Example: HP DL380p Gen8 • 10 DIMM types, 5 capacities • Some ways to deploy 64 GB of memory: Source: Gartner Technology Planner as of 8 Feb 2013

30. Memory Power: 5% to 35% Power for Options for an IBM x3650 M4 with 2ch E5-2680 768GB, 16 drives, 6 I/O cards 64GB, 2 HDDs Power by Component, HP Blade with 2 processors, 48GB of memory

31. DRAM Futures Samsung Server DIMM roadmap (2012) Source: JEDEC (http://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/JS_Choi.pdf)

32. DRAM: What Happens Next? What happens next? 8Gb density (~2013), 16Gb (~2015) 3D stacking DIMMs Memory-atop-CPU “Hybrid Memory Cubes” Hybrid Memory (combinations of DRAM + NVRAM) Phase-change memory, magnetic RAM, memristers Picture Source: JEDEC.org Picture Source: EETimes

33. Power Trends

34. Energy Required by IT infrastructure • Energy used to power • Servers 45% • Storage 29% • Networking 26% • Inside servers, individual processors are much more efficient, but consuming more absolute power. Source: Gartner estimate 2012

35. 2-socket x86 server power trend Source: HP Whitepaper, “Power efficiency and Power Management in HP ProLiant servers” http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c03161908/c03161908.pdf

36. Server power efficiency trend Doubles every 7 quarters Server performance per watt, 2007 - 2012 5x increase in 4 yrs SPECpower results, Four most recent x86 server generations

37. Power Consumption • More power-hungry options are available Configuration: 2ch “Top Bin” processor “Base” Configuration: Minimum required to boot. “Maximum” Configuration: Filled with options with highest power

38. Power Supplies • Right-Sizing: Smaller power supplies for smaller loads Source: Dell Whitepaper, “12G Power Efficiency How To”, dell.com

39. Power Supplies • Zone of highest efficiency is getting wider Source: HP Whitepaper

40. Other Trends in Server Performance

41. 10 Technologies Impacting Server Trends Public Cloud / Off-Premises Cloud VMware Farms as the Server Converged / Integrated / Fabric-Based Systems Appliances New Vendors: ODMs OpenCompute Project Flash Getting Stuck Everywhere Crazy #*@$ like High-Frequency Trading Scale-up x86 The Millennium that Mainframes Finally Die

42. Questions? 41