Sample MGT 337 Homework #1 (Fall 2005)

SYSTEM DESCRIPTIONS

IBM Intellistation Pro workstations are systems designed for business production environments concerned with reliability and performance. At first glance they appear to be ordinary mass market personal computers, but the technology and speed of these workstations is significantly more robust. The workstations tout technologies such as 64-bit computing, dual core processors, and advanced graphics rendering. Each workstation is either built around an

AMD or Intel Processor.

The Intellistation Z workstation in the presented configuration features two (2) Intel Xeon

Processors, clocked at 3.6GHz with 2MB L2 cache (L3 cache is not available). The Xeon operates with a traditional Front Side Bus architecture that is clocked at 800 MHz, the fastest available at the moment. This chip, codenamed “Irwindale,” also features a 64-bit instruction set which is almost fully compatible with instruction sets designed for 64-bit AMD processors. For video cards, the Intel Xeon has full support for PCI Express. DDR2-400 memory is also supported (note: this workstation is equipped with DDR), supporting up to 4 Gigabytes (per processor) running in 32-bit mode, and 16 Exabytes in 64-bit mode. Hyper-Threading is another important aspect of the Xeon processor, especially when utilized with two processors.

The Intellistation A workstation is an AMD configured system featuring two (2) Opteron

275s. Each processor is dual-core, with each core operating at 2.2GHz (4 processor cores total).

1MB of L2 cache is available for each core. The Opteron utilizes DDR for memory (not DDR2) and also supports PCI Express for video rendering. Memory is controlled by the integrated DDR

DRAM controller, and can support up to 8 registered DIMMs (per processor). Instead of a traditional Front Side Bus, AMD has developed what they call “Direct Connect Architecture.” This design is intended to reduce bottlenecks through various means, such as connecting the memory directly to the processor, and also connecting each processor directly. The following diagram will help illustrate this design.

SYSTEM COMPARISONS

The Intellistation Z is, simply put, much more expensive then the Intellistation A. Both workstations are configured identically to other one, except for the most significant piece, the processor. The Intellistation A with the AMD Opteron costs $3754 more then the Intellistation Z with the Intel Xeon processor. It all comes down to whether or not the higher price tag is worth the gain in processing power. That determination depends on a variety of factors. Assuming for the moment that the Opteron does outperform the Xeon, the particular function (i.e. Web server, engineering workstation) has to benefit substantially from a performance standpoint. Further, the business utilizing the function has to realistically see a future financial return on this investment.

Basically, performance gain means absolutely nothing to a business if the monetary gain is not there.

Software Support

The main issue with these two workstations is the support for 32-bit versus 64-bit software and operating systems. Both workstations will support 64-bit operating systems, and both also support the running of 32 and 64-bit applications within the 64-bit environment. This is an important implication, as both workstations are capable of backwards compatibility with any 32-bit application. Other then that though, the only real issue is the availability of applications which fully utilize the 64-bit architecture.

Benchmarks and Application Performance

CPU Benchmarks

In a couple synthetic (not a real world application) benchmarks done in SiSoft Sandra

2005, the AMD Opteron shows nearly double the performance of the Intel Xeon. No doubt the

Opteron has the potential to be twice as powerful as the Intel Xeon, but real applications rarely perform like synthetic benchmarks. However, even though it is a synthetic test of speed, it does show the potential of the Opteron if it was running a real application that could take advantage of four processor cores. (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opteron275&page=6)

3D Rendering

In two 3D rendering benchmarks run in 3D Studio Max and Maya, both very popular 3D design applications, the Opteron proved to be about 33% faster then the Xeon. These tests demonstrate that the speed of the Opteron is not just limited to synthetic benchmarks. Other applications such as 3D graphing or CAD programs would most likely benefit in a similar fashion. (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opteron275&page=7)

2D Authoring

This benchmark measures performance in Adobe Photoshop CS (profession photo editing software) and Macromedia Flash MX 2004 (graphics suite used a large part in web development). The results show that the Xeon outperforms the Opteron by about 25%. This is a case where the software simply cannot make sufficient use of a dual-core processor, and benefits more from a higher clock rate then simultaneous processing. For these types of application, it would be a waste of money, as well as a performance setback, to run them on a dual-core processor. (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opteron275&page=8)

Audio/Video Encoding

In a series of benchmarks done by different groups using Windows Media Encoder,

LAME, Mencoder, and OggEnc (encodes to the .ogg format). Analyzing all of these benchmarks as a whole, there is no clear leader. It can only be concluded that both the Xeon and

Opteron perform relatively equal with the other when it comes to encoding various media formats. (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=opteron275&page=9 & http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/21/1747217&mode=thread)

Mathematical Calculations

In two separate benchmarking tests, one uses Sciencemark, a benchmark that run a series of scientific and physics calculations. The other uses a matrix multiplication program and a floating point calculation program. Overall, the Opteron is faster by an average of 30% through all the tests. The speed is increased in the Sciencemark benchmarks, and varying in the others depending on whether the test was made to utilize more computational threads or not. Although synthetic, these benchmarks are very good indicators of real performance in applications with a large amount of floating point calculations.

Reliability and Compatibility

There are no significant issues with reliability and compatibility. RECCOMENDATIONS BASED THE FOLLOWING USES

Digital Multimedia Workstation (photo manipulation, animation, audio processing, DVD creation)

Based on the above benchmarks, 2D authoring and Audio/Video encoding, it is clear that the Intel Xeon is faster when using the most popular multimedia software. It is possible that in the future developers for that software will implement the coding necessary to take advantage of a dual core processor, but given the increased price and current benchmarks, the Xeon is the clearly the better choice. RECCOMENDATION: INTELLISTATION Z (XEON)

Engineering CAD/CAM Workstation (wireframe, solid modeling, structural analysis)

First of all, the 3D rendering benchmark earlier clearly demonstrates that the Opteron can run 3D applications faster then the Xeon. Furthermore, engineering workstations are extremely computationally intensive, and would benefit even more from the simple matter of increased computing power. So whether or not the specific CAD/CAM software will be able to utilize the four processors cores of the Opteron makes little difference because there will always be more multitasking to be done, which the Opteron will be able to handle.

RECCOMENDATION: INTELLISTATION A (OPTERON)

Marketing Research Workstation (database extraction, data mining, statistical analysis, result visualization)

The uses of this marketing workstation will probably run best on a CPU that is able to perform mathematical computations faster. Both processors, however, perform relatively equal to the other in that respect. Therefore the Xeon might make a better choice because it is less expensive. However, this workstation must also be very good at multitasking, which the

Opteron does extremely well. Basically, with the Opteron, this workstation will be able to do computations just as fast as the Xeon, but also with the ability to do lot of other things at the same time. RECCOMENDATION: INTELLISTATION A (OPTERON) Grading Criteria Subtracted Required Elements Points Title page OK Formatting OK Outline OK ≤ 5 pages Exactly 5 pp Comparisons Cost OK System SW OK Performance Good Reliab/Comp OK Other Conclusions & Recommendations Multimedia Wkstn OK Engineering Wkstn OK Mktg Res Wkstn OK Grade