High end system vendors get the blues

Let's see what tricks and treats the OEMs will come up with for the new platform, but in the meantime, is there any hope for more varied and more value added configurations in the mainstream and still predominant dual socket platform, Intel and AMD alike? And that's putting aside the more proprietary vendor-specific stuff like blades or other non standard formats.

The answer is back in the past - graphics workstations, a market with less pomp and glamour, but that has sustained its growth, unique value add and, therefore, reasonable margins, for many years already.

Workstations are more demanding than generic servers, with the exceptions of HPC supercomputing nodes or I/O intensive machines. A high-end 3D workstation needs the best of everything, from the fastest CPU with the most cores - remember Intel's workstation-only W-series Nehalem Xeons - to the fastest and often very large memory system, where capacity, bandwidth and latency all matter. Then, a fast multi-slot PCIe I/O system to feed both one or two fast GPUs and often a RAID or fast SSD array. Finally, networking and other I/O are there, but not before we throw in an expensive display, a powerful PSU or two and sometimes even an unusual 3D pointing device such as the spaceball.

Where can Taiwan vendors make that difference felt, to justify higher prices and therefore margins? Workstation users would love performance tuning just as much as PC overclockers, as long as it, well, works, and brings added - very productivity-linked here - performance benefit. After all, finishing a render in four days instead of five days might mean 20 per cent more money earned per day here. So, what Asus did with its Z7S-WS dual Xeon mainboard two years ago, and what EVGA intends to do with its dual Xeon Classified board in April, might apply here well, that is, reasonable CPU and memory performance optimisation options for frequency, bandwidth and latency. Of course, that requires an improved power system, good component choice and demanding overall board design.

Then, a choice of I/O options: even though a single Intel Tylersburg 5520 chipset has 36 PCIe v2 lanes, these can be handled in many ways. One is, for those happy with this number of lanes and desiring minimum latency, like in say GPGPU work where the GPU to main memory round trip time is important, just optimise the traces and latencies on the 2 x PCIe x16 v2 slots, and leave the x4 v2 slot open for a, say, PCIe high-speed SSD card like the one Intel showed at the last IDF.

Another is for those requiring three or more GPGPU cards in one system, but all hanging from one chipset. Then, like EVGA Classified, the mainboard designers would add two hot - beware of heat handling here - Nvidia Nforce 200 PCIe bridges, and have four full PCIe x16 v2 slots here. An alternative, like in the Supermicro boards, is using two Tylersburg 5520 bridges, one on each CPU and then connected together via an additional QPI link. This way, you'll also get four full PCIe X16 slots, plus more extra x4 slots for I/O expansion.

Another add-on category that makes sense is better I/O. Like, for instance, using a more intelligent Gigabit Ethernet controller such as the Intel 82576 that takes on more TCP/IP protocol stack processing to offload work from the CPU. Same for USB3 and, why not, hardware-assisted SATA3 RAID capability. And, did I forget easy BIOS update via Flash within the BIOS itself, just like on most desktop boards?

There won't be a shortage of CPUs to fill into these. After all, Intel's Xeon 5600 series of six-core Westmere CPUs will come out next month, and the high performance top bins are expected to set new speed records. Also, the vendors could consider workstation flavours of dual socket and quad socket Nehalem-EX boards, even with multiple QPI links between each CPU pair for higher bandwidth, as well as massive memory for EDA chip design and computational science simulations which are the main targets of a possible Nehalem-EX workstation niche.

In summary, the generic server value add hardware side looks just as bleak for any Taiwan mainboard maker as a, well, generic client PC. But, custom servers aren't the only way out. Good old workstations might reward those vendors who dare to make the right moves. But let's not only wait for Gigabyte, Asus, Supermicro. It's also up to us, the users, to voice our opinions and make our needs known, too.