Recently launched servers from the likes of Dell and IBM, based on quad-core Clovertown processors from Intel, highlight the fast progress of multicore technology over the past year. Whether this pace actually benefits the industry or IT buyers is less clear, however.
From a very narrow perspective, the boost offered by processors with four cores rather than two is clear – even I can do that level of maths. And from a slightly wider perspective, there are real advantages in getting more performance from a processor for little additional power consumed: analysts estimate that typically more than twice the cost of each server will be burned up by its power consumption and heat management every year.
But a big question remains. Is a quad-core processor actually needed, right this minute? Is it possible that the server vendors and their customers are being pushed in this direction just so Intel can claim it has taken back the lead from AMD in advanced processor technology?
Or look at it this way. The server vendors are Intel’s primary customers, and mid-November – when the quad-core servers were announced – is in the middle of one of their most important quarters for sales. Intel’s timing is intentional, I suspect. Usually in the annual cycle of customer spending, IT managers are parsimonious with hardware budgets for most of the year, but spend up to their full allocations in the final quarter so that any unspent funds are not lost for good.
Even though Intel’s four-core Clovertown is socket-compatible with the dual-core processors, there have been strong hints that server vendors would have been far happier to wait and get this important quarter behind them before presenting their customers with unfamiliar new options.
How many customers will now feel that they must defer an otherwise inevitable dual-core purchase to ponder the new quad-core processors? Most customers, I’m sure, will have the sense to press on with their existing buying plans, pausing only to approve the purchase of a single quad-core system for the applications development team, just to see what it can do.
Meanwhile, AMD is not being wholly unreasonable when it argues that Clovertown is not really a quad-core processor, but two dual-core devices stuck together. This means that vendors and users will be expected to go through yet another cost-benefit assessment in just a few months’ time, when the real Intel quad-core devices are introduced.
All in all, it seems Intel is putting server makers and their customers to a good deal of inconvenience just so it can blow a public raspberry at AMD. I wonder how many will appreciate the joke?
