Intel’s New Xeon Chip Set to Storm the Clouds
March 19, 2012
As regards clouds in general, “storm” is not a word you would want to hear. However, by storming the clouds, I refer to the new Xeon chip’s ability to make cloud computing faster and more resilient. If you are a sports fan and familiar with the Olympics motto of “Citius (faster), Altius (higher), Fortius (stronger),” you will be interested to know that the Xeon E5 speeds up computing in the cloud, elevates it to higher energy efficiency and strengthens it through enhanced redundancy. I spoke with Cloud Computing and Data Center Industry Engagement Manager at Intel IT, Ajay Chandramouly, to understand how.
Describing himself initially as a “non-believer” and then a “convert turned zealot,” Ajay mentioned his initial skepticism to believe the hype around cloud computing. However, having witnessed firsthand its immense benefits to Intel IT, he has migrated to the cloud, pun intended. Ajay described how Intel is using the private cloud to enhance its internal systems and improve productivity, activities that have seen the company bag a coveted CIO 100 Award…
From cloud computing in general, our conversation moved towards the recently launched Xeon E5, which in Ajay’s words, “was designed with the cloud in mind.” He said that this chip, with its innovative integrated I/O architecture, Intel Trusted Execution Technology and Intel Advanced Encryption Standard Instructions can deliver real business value to other enterprise IT shops like higher performance, lower latency and 50% less energy consumption.
More importantly for Intel IT, this has translated into $9 million in savings (hard cash, as Ajay emphasized and doesn’t include one of the biggest benefits of cloud such as agility and enhanced employee productivity through the reduction in infrastructure provisioning times from days to hours) and marked productivity improvements in certain processes for Intel IT. Based on the results of early testing of the Xeon E5 in Intel IT’s Silicon Design environment, Intel IT will be able to consolidate servers by as much as 20 to 1 and has identified opportunities to reduce its overall data center count by another 35% over the next few years.
As our readers know, while the cloud is everywhere courtesy the Internet (public clouds) or LAN (private clouds), it actually resides in data centers. And the chip is the heart of the data center. Just as an athlete with the stronger heart wins the race, so does a cloud with the better chip. And the Xeon E5 is the best chip currently available.