Intel IDF 2007: Datacenter Technology
by Johan De Gelas on September 20, 2007 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
FB-DIMMs and Servers
IBM's newest x3950 M2 server is an innovative design: it includes a 4GB flash drive (the same as in some of their blade servers) which runs the ESX 3i virtualization layer. The new X4 chipset tries to combine the best of FB-DIMMs (high capacity, easy routing of the serial bus) with the advantages of normal DDR2 DIMMs (low power) by using one buffer - which is serially connected to the main chipset - for up to eight DDR2 DIMMs.
Intel is going to introduce DDR2 support in its DP server line later this year. We talked to Diane M. Bryant, Vice President of the Digital Enterprise Group, and she expressed her firm belief that FB-DIMMs still have a bright future ahead. The power consumption of the AMB has already gone down from 4-5W to 3W.
Qimonda, alias "Infineon", has another solution to further drive down the power requirements of FB-DIMMs.
They propose to use quad-rank (QR) FB-DIMMs. The price of a 4GB QR-DIMM should be lower than two dual-rank 2GB DIMMs. More importantly, given a certain capacity, you have only half the number of AMBs which reduces power significantly.
IBM's newest x3950 M2 server is an innovative design: it includes a 4GB flash drive (the same as in some of their blade servers) which runs the ESX 3i virtualization layer. The new X4 chipset tries to combine the best of FB-DIMMs (high capacity, easy routing of the serial bus) with the advantages of normal DDR2 DIMMs (low power) by using one buffer - which is serially connected to the main chipset - for up to eight DDR2 DIMMs.
Intel is going to introduce DDR2 support in its DP server line later this year. We talked to Diane M. Bryant, Vice President of the Digital Enterprise Group, and she expressed her firm belief that FB-DIMMs still have a bright future ahead. The power consumption of the AMB has already gone down from 4-5W to 3W.
Qimonda, alias "Infineon", has another solution to further drive down the power requirements of FB-DIMMs.
They propose to use quad-rank (QR) FB-DIMMs. The price of a 4GB QR-DIMM should be lower than two dual-rank 2GB DIMMs. More importantly, given a certain capacity, you have only half the number of AMBs which reduces power significantly.
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fesodes - Thursday, September 20, 2007 - link
On page 2 you said "Intel is going to introduce DDR2 support in its DP server line later this year"So you are implying that later this year we'll be able to build DP servers without
FB-DIMMS? I just find it odd that if thats indeed so, why would their skulltrail platform require FB-DIMMS.
cheburashka - Friday, September 21, 2007 - link
Listen for the San Clemente chipset.