Elmer & Intel Investors - Major Software Support for Pentium III Xeon
The following article describes not only the support that Intel's Pentium III Xeon is receiving from major software vendors, but it describes the PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS of this software due to the new SSE instruction set of the Pentium III Xeon.
"For example, officials from SAS said that higher levels of cache and the new extensions to the Intel instruction set, combined with the Intel server memory architecture, will result in an 80 percent performance gain for SAS analytical applications. "
"Oracle officials report that some customers are already seeing 200 percent gains in performance on Oracle8i applications. SAP officials said they also expect to see significant gains. "
I'm sure the higher clock speeds also help out !
Paul
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infoworld.com
Pentium III Xeon gets thumb's up from app vendors
By Michael Vizard and Ed Scannell InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 10:48 AM PT, Mar 17, 1999 NEW YORK -- Providers of graphics-intensive software and online content are expecting to see a major boost in performance following the deployment of Pentium III Xeon servers and workstations.
Announced here Wednesday, the Pentium III Xeon family of processor provides higher levels of cache and a new set of Internet Streaming single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) extensions that specifically boost graphics and multimedia applications, according to Intel officials.
For example, officials from SAS said that higher levels of cache and the new extensions to the Intel instruction set, combined with the Intel server memory architecture, will result in an 80 percent performance gain for SAS analytical applications.
Meanwhile, Microsoft officials report that the Pentium III Xeon processors should make applications' use-on-demand feeds twice as fast, and for the first time give content providers the capability to capture 640-by-640 images, which are needed to deliver broadcast quality video via the Internet.
"The Pentium III Xeon is a clear cost-savings for content providers," said John Paddleford, program manager for network multimedia applications at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash.
Dual-processor Pentium III Xeon systems should also help IT managers trying to overcome Windows NT's tendency to spike to 100 percent usage when subjected to numerous simultaneous interrupts, which in turn leads to system crashes, said analysts at the Aberdeen Group, in Boston. Deploying a second processor should help alleviate some of those crashes, they said.
In general, Pentium III servers should also provide much needed scalability relief for many of the enterprise applications running on PC server architectures.
"The great benefit for users is that you effectively have enough headroom to allow your software applications to grow," said John Miner, general manager for the Enterprise Servers Group at Intel, in Beaverton, Ore.
Although neither SAP or Oracle have completed benchmark tests, Oracle officials report that some customers are already seeing 200 percent gains in performance on Oracle8i applications. SAP officials said they also expect to see significant gains.
"Holding working instruction sets and data in close proximity to each other should result in significant gains," said Rick Pitts, vice president for strategic solutions partners at SAP, in Foster City, Calif.
Even without upgrading applications, Aberdeen analysts are advising customers that they can expect to see a 25 percent growth in server processor demands per year because of increased system services generated by new client software, virus protection software, proxy servers, firewalls, and server-side Java implementations.
For at least one systems integrator, more headroom on Intel systems is critical need.
"Our customers are exchanging rich data types like CAD drawings and manufacturing instructions, and you can't have processors holding up the traffic. This chip better helps us to unclog the bottlenecks," said David Cope, vice president of marketing and business development at Extricity Software, a provider of electronic-commerce solutions in Redwood Shores, Calif.
"Our performance is up by 25 percent, which we think is a dramatic increase," said Glen Monteleone, managing director at CastleNet, a provider of financial systems in New York. "This chip should accelerate our move to four-way and, later this year, eight-way systems"
Although enterprise applications stand to gain the most from the Pentium III Xeon servers, more modest gains in performance are also expected to be seen in Internet applications, which can expect to see a 10 percent to 15 percent gain in TCP/IP performance.
"We expect to see about a 10 to 15 percent gain in TCP/IP performance because of the SIMD instructions, said Donnie Barnes, director of technical projects at Red Hat Software, a Linux distributor in Durham, N.C.
For at least one user, that performance gain should arrive just in the nick of time.
"We have a lot of personal interaction with our users. With the summer season coming up we need systems that we think are reliable enough to handle additional traffic," said Mary Lou Kelley, director of product marketing at Ben & Jerry's, in Burlington Vt., which runs its Web site on Linux.
In a similar vein, providers of Intel-based workstations said they expect to see a 25 percent to 30 percent gain in performance over the Pentium II systems.
According to analysts at Aberdeen, pricing for Pentium III Xeon servers will range from $4,000 to $6,000 for dual-processor servers, $5,000 to $12,000 for four-way servers, and $15,000 to $50,000 for eight-way servers. The eight-way Profusion server system for the Pentium III will be available in this year's third quarter.
The 500-MHz Pentium III Xeon comes with three Level 2 cache sizes: 512KB, 1MB and 2MB. In April, Intel plans to offer a 550-MHz version of the processor with the same Level 2 options. Servers based on that processor also are expected in the third quarter.
Dell, Compaq, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM are among the companies expected soon to ship workstations and servers based on the Pentium III Xeon.
The 500-MHz processor with 512KB cache is available now priced at $931 in quantities of 1,000. The 1MB and 2MB versions are priced at $1,980 and $3,692, respectively, in similar quantities.
Intel said the Pentium III Xeon family is "drop-in" compatible with existing systems using the Pentium II Xeon processor.
Intel Corp., in Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at www.intel.com.
Michael Vizard is InfoWorld's executive news editor. Ed Scannell is an InfoWorld editor at large based in Framingham, Mass. James Niccolai, a San Francisco correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate, contributed to this article.
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