New Xeon E7 v2 supports up to 32-socket servers with configurations of up to 15 processing cores

Are RISC based servers dead? The big three RISC vendors are IBM (AIX) / HP (HP-UX) / Oracle (Solaris), all three are facing shrinking revenues in their server divisions as customers are increasingly moving to commodity x86 servers.

Can the big three invest the same level as Intel in R&D and semiconductor fabrication plants when they have far fewer RISC server customers than Intel has x86 server customers? Only a matter of time before only customers still buying expensive RISC servers will be legacy customers.

System	Process	Transistors (B)	Max clock speed (GHz)	Max CPU cores
IBM  Power 7	45nm	1.2	4.2	8
HP Itanium 2 (9500)	32nm	3.1	2.5	8
Oracle T5	28nm	1.5	3.6	16
Oracle M6	28nm	4.2	3.6	12
Intel Xeon E7 V2	22nm	4.3	3.6	15

Intel's big Xeon E7 just upped  the ante for crunching big data, promising to double the performance over the previous generation with the new Xeon E7 v2 chipset.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/product-briefs/xeon-e7-v2-family-brief.pdf
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/78584/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-v2-Family

The Xeon processor E7 8800/4800/2800 v2 product family is designed to support up to 32-socket servers with configurations of up to 15 processing cores and up to 1.5 terabytes of memory per socket.

The new quad socket Xeon servers can offer up to 3TB of RAM with relatively affordable 32GB DIMM technology and no less than 6TB with the ultra-expensive 64GB LR-DIMMs. That is another reason why the Intel Xeon E7 v2 platform will be more attractive than much more expensive RISC servers that are typically limited to 1-2TB.

All Xeon E7 v2 CPUs utilize socket LGA2011-1. Specifications of new microprocessors are provided below:

Model	Cores / Threads	Frequency / Turbo	L3 cache	Memory	TDP	Price
Xeon E7-2850 v2	12 / 24	2.3 / 2.8 GHz	24 MB	DDR3-1600	105W	$2558
Xeon E7-2870 v2	15 / 30	2.3 / 2.9 GHz	30 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$4227
Xeon E7-2880 v2	15 / 30	2.5 / 3.1 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$5339
Xeon E7-2890 v2	15 / 30	2.8 / 3.4 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	155W	$6451
Xeon E7-4809 v2	6 / 12	1.9 GHz	12 MB	DDR3-1333	105W	$1223
Xeon E7-4820 v2	8 / 16	2 / 2.5 GHz	16 MB	DDR3-1600	105W	$1446
Xeon E7-4830 v2	10 / 20	2.2 / 2.7 GHz	20 MB	DDR3-1600	105W	$2059
Xeon E7-4850 v2	12 / 24	2.3 / 2.8 GHz	24 MB	DDR3-1600	105W	$2837
Xeon E7-4860 v2	12 / 24	2.6 / 3.2 GHz	30 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$3838
Xeon E7-4870 v2	15 / 30	2.3 / 2.9 GHz	30 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$4394
Xeon E7-4880 v2	15 / 30	2.5 / 3.1 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$5506
Xeon E7-4890 v2	15 / 30	2.8 / 3.4 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	155W	$6619
Xeon E7-8850 v2	12 / 24	2.3 / 2.8 GHz	24 MB	DDR3-1600	105W	$3059
Xeon E7-8857 v2	12 / 12	3 / 3.6 GHz	30 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$3838
Xeon E7-8870 v2	15 / 30	2.3 / 2.9 GHz	30 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$4616
Xeon E7-8880 v2	15 / 30	2.5 / 3.1 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	130W	$5729
Xeon E7-8880L v2	15 / 30	2.2 / 2.8 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	105W	$5729
Xeon E7-8890 v2	15 / 30	2.8 / 3.4 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	155W	$6841
Xeon E7-8891 v2	10 / 20	3.2 / 3.7 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	155W	$6841
Xeon E7-8893 v2	6 / 12	3.4 / 3.7 GHz	37.5 MB	DDR3-1600	155W	$6841

Here is a 2 socket (30 CPU cores) SPECint_rate2006 result, expect significantly larger results soon with 8 socket+ servers:

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-b260-m4-blade-server/b260m4-specint-rate-base.pdf

Here is a 4 socket (60 CPU cores) SPECint_rate2006 result:

http://www.specbench.org/cpu2006/results/res2014q1/cpu2006-20140210-28464.html

So a cheap 4 socket Intel server beats the expensive IBM Power 780 monster with 8 sockets in  SPECint_rate2006 result...mind you IBM will soon release Power 8 based servers, yet IBM can not compete on high performance at low cost: 

http://www.specbench.org/cpu2006/results/res2010q1/cpu2006-20100208-09587.html

AnandTech has a good review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7757/quad-ivy-brigde-ex-60-cores-120-threads

Huge performance on TPC-E database benchmark (note that only 15% of cost is server):
http://www.tpc.org/results/individual_results/ibm/ibm~tpce~ibm_system_x3850_x6~es~2014-02-16~v01.pdf

SAP SD two-tier benchmark results show that latest Intel based servers are competitive with large, expensive RISC servers ....the number are irrelevant though as 99% of all environments do not need such large systems (concurrent 47,500 users anyone?):
http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx?num=200

Vendors with Intel Xeon E7 V2 servers:

Vendor	Models
IBM	IBM System x3850 X6 four-socket system, x3950 X6 eight-socket system
HP	ProLiant DL580, DL560, BL560 – all four-socket systems
Dell	Dell R920 four-socket systems -  up to 6TB of memory.
Cisco	UCS B260 M4 Blade Server two-socket system