Intel Solid-State Drives (Intel SSDs) just got
better. The next generation Intel SSD 320 Series offers built-in data
protection features, better performance, larger capacities and more
value for your money.
Built with 25 nanometer (nm) compute-quality Intel®
NAND Flash Memory, the Intel SSD 320 Series accelerates PC performance
where it matters most. With random read performance up to 39,500
Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) and sequential
read performance of up to 270 megabytes per second (MB/s), your PC will
blaze through the most demanding applications and will handle intense
multi-tasking needs. Couple that performance with random writes up to
23,000 IOPS and sequential writes up to 220MB/s to unleash your system.
Superior built-in data protection features
The new Intel SSD 320 Series contains built-in features to protect your data from external threats and internal system snags.
The Intel SSD 320 Series comes pre-configured with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128 bit encryption capabilities.
In the event of theft or loss of your computer, you have the peace of
mind that your personal data is secured by advanced encryption
technologies.
Additionally, two new data protection features guard your data from
internal system mishaps. To reduce potential data loss, the Intel SSD
320 Series detects and protects from an unexpected system power loss.
The drive saves all cached data in the process of being written before
shutting down, thereby minimizing potential data loss.
The Intel SSD 320 Series also improves reliability by providing an
array of surplus NAND flash. If the controller encounters a faulty NAND
array, the Intel SSD 320 Series automatically reconfigures itself to
reduce the prospect of data loss.
3TB of capacity easily
configurable with Seagate® DiscWizard software to overcome legacy
capacity limits of 2.1TB with no additional hardware required.
Massive
capacity meets the demands of today's storage-craving applications,
such as high-performance game systems and video production systems.
SATA
6Gb/s interface enables the use of the industry's newest and fastest
hard drive controllers targeted for high-performance desktop, gaming and
entry-level server systems.
7200-RPM drive complements the massive capacity, delivering a powerful combination of storage and high-end desktop performance.
64MB cache optimizes burst performance and reduces data throughput bottlenecks.
After the number of processor cores estimated to be required per
server role is understood, baseline memory recommendations can be
applied. The following table illustrates the minimum supported and
recommended memory configurations for Exchange 2010 server roles.
The following describes the minimum requirements and recommended maximum configurations:
Minimum Supported This is the minimum memory
configuration suitable for Exchange 2010 servers. The minimum hardware
requirements must be met to receive support from Microsoft Customer
Service and Support.
Recommended Maximum This is the recommended memory
configuration for specific server roles. Recommended maximum is defined
as the upper limit of viable processor and memory configurations based
on price and performance. The recommended maximum configuration is a
guideline. It isn't a support criterion, and it doesn't take into
account the resource requirements of third-party applications that might
access or be installed on the server. The recommended maximum
configuration may change over time based on price changes and technology
advancements.
The following table shows the minimum supported and recommended maximum memory configurations for Exchange 2010.
Memory configurations for Exchange 2010 servers based on installed server roles
Practically all of our testing efforts have been on commercial off the shelf (COTS) software packages running under Windows 7 Professional. We can say that drivers for the GPU are available but not always fine-tuned.
There are applications written to run under Linux. We have found that Linux applications have lower compatibility with the latest releases of GPU hardware than Windows and there are fewer drivers for Linux than Windows. This situation implies that Windows is more popular than Linux for applications in this area. Nevertheless, we understand that this applies to COTS only and may not apply to research situations or non-commercial scenarios where Linux is more popular. GeForce or Quadro
We have done performance testing on 3 application packages individually and on the view-sets from 8 application packages with SPECviewperf11. The 3 application packages are AutoCAD 2011 from AutoDesk, Premiere Pro CS5.3 and Photoshop CS5.5 from Adobe. The 8 view-sets are from Lightwave 01 from Newtek, CATIA 03 and Solid Works 03 from Dassault Systeme, Ensight 04 from CEI, Maya 03 from AutoDesk, Pro Engineer 05 from PTC, Teamcenter Visualisation, and NX from Siemens.
For the individual application testing, we used one standard CEW workstation and we varied the GPU between GeForce GTS450 and Quadro 2000. We chose these 2 cards because they have similar hardware specifications. Their key specifications are the same being 192 CUDA cores and 1GB GDDR5 memory. Interestingly the three packages produced different responses to GeForce and Quadro. AutoCAD responded better to GeForce than Quadro (10% better on 3D). However, once we updated the Quadro GPU driver from Nvidia, Quadro performance shot through the roof (300% better on 3D). Photoshop did not really care if the GPU is GeForce or Quadro, whereas Premier Pro responded to Quadro better than to GeForce (60% better).
For the SPEC testing, we used a separate CEW workstation and we found that only 1 view-set responded to GeForce better than Quadro and this view-set is from Ensight. Ensight performed slightly better on GeForce, whereas the other 7 view-sets performed substantially better with Quadro.
Although GeForce provided respectable level of performance on many incidences, this series of GPU cards is positioned for the consumer market as against the Quadro series for the professional market. Quadro has features such as Serial Data Interface option, Serial Link Interface Frame Rendering, Full Screen Anti-Aliasing, and G-Sync option that are not available from GeForce.
CPU or GPU
The issue of whether an application package will respond better to GPU or CPU has been discussed in an earlier paper. It is a matter for the software vendor to decide. The trend is obviously in favour of GPU due to the contribution of CUDA to Tianhe-1A achieving the Number One Global 500 Supercomputer position in November 2010 and similarly to an AMBER workstation when it smashed a bio-molecular simulation record in May 2011.
As at July 2011, all systems require both CPU and GPU to handle professional applications for simulation, visualization, digital content creation and computer aided design etc. It is not a case of CPU or GPU. For low end graphics applications, the workstation can have a CPU with an integrated GPU.
We have done benchmarking tests to find out how the variation of CPU affects the performance of software packages given a fixed GPU. We used the same CEW machine and installed Core i3-2100 CPU and Core i7-2600K to see the response by the 8 view-sets covered by SPECviewperf11. Only Maya 03 responded vigorously to the extra CPU resources or capabilities (performance jumped up over 200%) whereas the other 7 applications responded mildly (less than 10%).
When we retested without Anti-Aliasing which is a GPU function (this implies that the previous tests were done with Anti-Aliasing), the impact of CPU variation on performance became more obvious. This is logical and can be expected.
To get more illumination or support of the above scenario, we did another round of benchmarking and this time we focussed on AutoCAD. We fixed the GPU with Quadro 2000 and varied the CPU from Core i7-950 to 2600K and Xeon 5680. The performance did change a bit more than as shown by SPECviewperf11, but is still within a range of 10% and is definitely not anything like 200%.
A further revelation is that the main memory installed beyond 4GB will not help performance even though Windows 7 64bit version is capable of using the extra memory. We tested with 4GB, 6GB and 8GB and the performance change is negligible and within the margin of error.
Will APU help?
AMD will be releasing APU for desktop use any time. We expect APU to perform better on graphics than Intel CPU with integrated graphics for 2 reasons. The first is that APU is similar in CPU performance as Intel Core i5 but it has more than 10 times the number of GPU cores as Intel. The second is that APU is capable of working with an add-on GPU card whereas Intel CPU is not capable. We will find out more and advise later.
e next generation Intel SSD 320 Series offers built-in data
protection features, better performance, larger capacities and more
value for your money.
