Please join the Dell Performance Engineering team for a live chat on the new PowerEdge R815 server using AMD’s latest Opteron 6100 series processors (Magny-Cours). The chat will highlight the latest performance results from Dell’s SPA team and answer questions from community members.

Technical Community - Background Reading


Inside Enterprise IT blog: Simplifying Management With New AMD Opteron Processor-based Dell PowerEdge Servers

Power Solutions Article:
Introducing the Dell PowerEdge R815: High Performance in a Compact Design

PDF: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q10-20100351-AMD.pdf

Chat Transcript



Dell-KongY Garima is a lead engineer from the Dell HPC Team.
Dell-KongY AMD Magny Cours and the Dell PowerEdge R815 is the course today.
Dell-JeffS Welcome to the Dell TechCenter Tech Tuesday chat!
Dell-JeffS We have a number of moderators here, and I'm not sure who they all are... :) Dell-davidm is from the Dell Performance Team.
Dell-JeffS Bill Brandtly, Andy Parma are both from AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).
Dell-JeffS Dell_garimak is from the HPC Engineering Team.
Dell-JeffS I'm sure I'm missing a few, but let's go ahead and jump right in.
Dell-KongY Davidm is manager of the SPA Team at Dell in the Octo.
Dell-KongY Garima is a lead engineer from the Dell HPC (MSS) team.
Dell-JeffS How about we start with a quick overview of the Dell PowerEdge R815?
Dell-KongY Dell PowerEdge R815 product detail http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/poweredge-r815?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04.
Dell-KongY Dell PowerEdge R815 Spec sheet http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/poweredge-r815-spec-sheet-en.pdf.
Andy_Parma Welcome to the chat. The Dell PowerEdge R815 is a recently released 4P/2U server using AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors.
Bill_Brantley The Magny Cours CPUs have an industry leading memory bandwidth (110 Gb/s) and peak FLOPs, which is key for HPC workloads.
Bill_Brantley Peak FLOPs using four 12 core CPUs is about 420 GFLOPs.
Dell_GarimaK @bill: So that's peak and not measured right?
Dell-JeffS Was that using Linpack?
Bill_Brantley No, that is peak. DGEMM might achieve high 80% of that peak while a single system might achieve 80-85% of the peak on Linpack.
Andy_Parma Additional performance information is available at www.amd.com/opteronperformance.
Andy_Parma In addition to the excellent memory bandwidth performance of the Dell PowerEdge R815, we expect this server to demonstrate excellent performance in SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006.
Dell-JeffS No questions with all these attendees?
eoineo What SPECint and SPECfp base numbers does Dell PowerEdge R815 get?
sixth_jonathan I dont see on the SPECs mentioning an embedded hypervisor option....or did I miss it?
Dell-KongY It's supported- http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?action=search&devicecategory=server&productid=1&advancedorbasic=advanced&maxdisplayrows=50&key=r815&release%5b%5d=-1&dateposted=-1&partnerid%5b%5d=-1&formfactorid%5b%5d=-1&filterbyevc=0&filterbyft=0&min_sockets=&min_cores=&min_memory=&rorre=0
DELL-DavidM @eoineo: 2P or 4P?
bd1zz3l 2 memory channels per processor?
Dell-KongY The Dell PowerEdge R815 is listed on the VMWare HCL.
Bill_Brantley 4 memory channels per CPU.
Dell_GarimaK @bd1zz3l: Yes, 2 DPC.
Dell_GarimaK Sorry, 4 channels per socket, 2 DIMMs per channel.
eoineo @davidm: ...4P
sixth_jonathan But is there an embedded option like on the Dell PowerEdge R610/710 for SD (Secure Digital) cards?
Dell-KongY @sixth: VMWare ESXi it's supported.
jwiese @sixth: Yes, there is an option for dual SD cards for redundancy.
DELL-DavidM @eoineo: SPECint_rate2006 = 771, SPECfp_rate2006 = 626 on the 4P Opteron 6174 Dell PowerEdge R815.
Andy_Parma In the latest Top500 supercomputers list that was released last week, a new Dell/AMD Opteron-based server entered the list at #89. We expect the Dell PowerEdge R815 to be able to achieve excellent success in future releases of the Top 500 list.
bd1zz3l Minimum processors 2? Or can you optionally install a single processor?
jwiese @davidm: Do you have VMMark numbers for that exact same configuration?
abartlett Looking at the SPECint/SPECfp rates or VMMark numbers, what's Dell's similar offering featuring that other processor company? Nice to see how much more bang for buck we're looking at here.
DELL-DavidM @bd1zz3l: Yes, minimum processors 2.
eoineo @davidm. Thanks, David. Assume these are the peak numbers and not base?
DELL-DavidM @eoineo: Correct.
DELL-DavidM @abartlett: We tend to let customers do their own comparisons since they're both partners of ours.
Dell_GarimaK @bd1zz3l: ... I thing to keep track of with the Dell PowerEdge R815 is optimal placement of processes on cores.
Dell_GarimaK We've seen that using numactl to pick the right socket/node/memory combination really matters.
abartlett Davidm: That's expected. Probably hard pleasing two masters I bet :).
jacobliberman @garima: Which OS’s are dell factory installing on this server?
Carolyn_Ri Any feedback on apps like Oracle that charge per Core for licensing?
Dell_GarimaK @jacob: Are you asking about the specific update version on RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server)? Let me check?
jacobliberman Sure.
jacobliberman And windows if applicable.
Carolyn_Ri 12 cores * 4 processors is a killer for Oracle licensing cost.
Dell-KongY @carolyn_ri: Dell BIOS allows you to enable/disable cores for Software licensing purposes.
cturner But does the vendor accept that?
Dell-KongY You will have additional "horse power" if you need it in your Dell PowerEdge R815.
Carolyn_Ri Does that reduce memory capacity or other features of the Dell PowerEdge R815?
cturner Disabling cores? That's pretty shaky ground and they don't have any public documentation on that.
jwiese Along that same line of thought, MySQL does not scale very well beyond 4-8 cores and hits a ceiling at 8 cores.
Dell_GarimaK @jacob: Windows 2008 R2, RHEL5.4 ERRATA (2.6.18-168.9.1).
Dell_GarimaK I need to check for SLES.
jacobliberman To[Private] Dell_GarimaK Does dell have a SLES-based HPC stack?
Dell_GarimaK @cturner: Oracle VM can be used to hard partition the CPUs as well.
cturner The earlier AMD performance link does have much in the way of real world benchmarks like MSSQL, MySQL, web server, SAP, VMWare. Any ideas when these will be out?
cturner @garimak: I had forgotten about that specific case. You are correct.
Dell_GarimaK To[Private] jacobliberman Dell SLES HPC: No, not yet.
DELL-DavidM @ctuner: "real world" and benchmarks"
Andy_Parma This website is updated periodically. We expect a refresh of this website (including the latest Dell PowerEdge R815 performance data) to be completed by the end of June.
DELL-DavidM Are sometimes conflicting terms.
DELL-DavidM Dell will be publishing more Dell PowerEdge R815 benchmark results as Andy said over the coming weeks.
aehart What is the difference between SPECint base vs. peak?
DELL-DavidM @aehart: Peak is a higher score than base, and allows more compiler optimizations to get a better score.
jacobliberman To[Private] Dell_GarimaK It’s probably SLES 11 Sp 1.
Dell_GarimaK To[Private] jacobliberman But no HPC stack for sure.
Carolyn_Ri Thanks for making the 2P and 4P processor the same on this server—this makes planning to grow my 2P configuration much easier.
jacobliberman To[Private] Andy_Parma I just want to ask whether they will support upgrades to AMDs next generation CPU since it’s socket compatible.
jwiese I don't recall if anyone had any VMMark numbers presently for a 4P 6174 configuration.
jacobliberman To[Private] Andy_Parma Dell typically requires a board replacement when it should only take a BIOS flash.
Andy_Parma That's a great point Carolyn. The AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors are priced to enable a low-cost upgrade from a 2P configuration to a 4P configuration.
Dell-JeffS We've got the Engineering team and Product manager on tap to talk about the new Dell PowerVault MD3200/MD3200i.
cturner That will be fun.
Dell-JeffS The following on to the Dell PowerVault MD3000i/MD3000...look for an announcement tomorrow, and a Blog/demo on Thursday by Dennis.
Carolyn_Ri Look forward to seeing the benchmarks posted. Haven't heard as much noise out there yet about this server. Any plans to market the AMD 6100 series more "loudly"?
Dell-JeffS Thank you for joining us today everyone! Thanks to Andy, Bill, David, Garima for moderating!