A Hosted Computing Services ProviderA hosted computing services provider approached Corporate Technologies in 2008 to analyze Xeon versus Opteron architecture for use in its large-scale, enterprise-class infrastructure, running a virtualized application with high-performance requirements.
We set up our Technology Lab to run side-by-side comparisons on Intel Xeon 7000 Series versus AMD Opteron Quad-Core Series on three requirements—cost per watt, performance under heavy load, and unified architecture.
Our tests showed that AMD servers outperformed Intel on each requirement. The Opteron architecture consistently used less electricity for power and cooling than Intel, with an estimated cost savings per year of several hundred dollars per rack. Under heavy load, AMD Opteron was able to process more transactions/second on OLTP databases than Intel Xeon under the same load.
Our tests also showed that Opteron processors were optimized for 2-, 4-, and 8-socket systems, while Intel processors were optimized for 2-, 4-, or 8-socket systems. Doubling sockets from 2 to 4 with Opteron resulted in near-linear double performance, while Intel yielded a 75% performance increase. To maintain performance, Intel required a new server optimized for 4 sockets, necessitating that the application be retested and recertified.
Our client accepted our recommendation to add AMD Opteron servers to its infrastructure. They have benefitted from their lower cost per watt and higher performance, and also from being able to buy lightly built commodity hardware at one-quarter the projected end capacity, then upgrade as needed with no additional server purchase and no recertification.
Going forward, we anticipate that similar comparisons will need to be remade on a frequent basis, in light of likely architecture evolution.
Fact: We rated Xeon versus Opteron architectures for suitability on large-scale, enterprise-class infrastructures.
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