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Archive for the ‘intel’ Category

I’ve been reading about the amazing features found in the new Intel Nehalem processors launched last week. This next generation of single, dual, and quad core Xeon processors is a virtualization technology enhancement that almost leaves me speechless. It’s my understanding that 6 and 8 core Nehalem processors are expected by the end of 2009 as well.

Some quick features that amaze me:

• Run up to 21 VMs on a single Nehalem processor server
• One Nehalem core could replace 9 previous generation Xeon processor based servers with 20% energy reduction
• Nehalem cores not being used can power down to conserve power and energy
• When Nehalem cores power down the clock speed of other cores can be boosted

So, rather than try to put all of this in my own words, here is a summary of “bite sized” quotes from various analysts’ articles that I’ve been reading. Be sure to check out all of these links for much more information. Read the rest of this entry »

Normally you must enable hyper threading in your server’s BIOS before ESX will report it as enabled on the Configuration tab in the Processors section.

For some reason IBM’s HS21 blade with Intel 5160 Xeon processors incorrectly reports hyper-threading by ESX as supported but not enabled. I thought I was losing it when I could not find where to enable hyper-threading in the blade’s BIOS. Turns out the only Intel processor that uses hyper-threading is the Pentium 4 workstation processor.

In fact, the entire family of Intel 5100 server processors do not have hyper-threading. For that matter, Intel does not make a server processor with hyper-threading.

Intel server and workstation processors

VMware Communities: IBM HS21 Blade Servers …

General Session notes:

Conference stats

• over 10,000 attendees
• 147 Exibitors

Diane Green – President & CEO – VMware

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