For many years, AMD has been dormant; its most recent generation of processors (Opteron) launching over five years ago. In the intervening years, the competition has steadily moved forward, removing the AMD Opteron processor from consideration for new server deployments. With the launch of the EPYC processor series, this has all changed. Not only does…
For maximum IOPS and minimum latency without a ridiculous power bill, it’s time for a better host controller interface to your flash storage! Thanks to the NVMe™ (Non-Volatile Memory express) specification, flash devices can now use the speed and bandwidth of a PCIe connection, without incurring the overhead of emulating a SAS interface. The I/O…
“Cloud computing” is everywhere these days, making it seem like anyone not on the cloud bandwagon is in the IT dark ages. The Cloud has moved to the center of the IT world, promising a cheap, easy alternative to building and maintaining an in-house IT infrastructure. But is it always the best solution? As with…
We have already said a lot about the impressive features of the new Intel® Xeon® platform, but at the end of the day, we all know that performance numbers speak louder than words. When a new CPU family arrives in our lab, we make a point of running a suite of demanding benchmarks to get…
Every day, the IT world is bombarded with hundreds of product announcements. Some are interesting, some are boring, and some downright forgettable. When Intel releases a new processor, however, it is truly an event. We are talking about a core change (no pun intended) to almost every Intel server we build — faster performance…
