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Executive Summary

The Intel® Itanium® processor family provides the foundation for mainframe-class computing

systems that offers greater flexibility and better cost models than traditional mainframe and

high-end RISC systems. The new Intel® Itanium® processor 9300 series delivers a major step

forward in this processor family. It provides more than double the performance

of the Intel®

Itanium® processor 9100 series, along with greater scalability and enhanced reliability, availability

and serviceability (RAS) features. Systems based on this new processor are ideal for running

demanding enterprise applications, such as database, business intelligence and enterprise

resource planning (ERP).

The most significant improvements in the Intel Itanium processor 9300 series include:

• Double the number of processing cores: The new processor has four high-performance cores, which will

substantially boost performance for many applications and provide greater capacity for consolidating more

applications and heavier workloads per server.

• Many-fold increases in bandwidth: With two integrated memory controllers and new Intel® QuickPath

Interconnect Technology, memory interconnect bandwidth has been improved by up to a factor of six and system

interconnect bandwidth by up to a factor of nine. These increases help to sustain high utilization rates for all

four processing cores, enabling substantial gains in performance and throughput for demanding workloads.

They also provide a resilient and high-performance foundation for building large multiprocessor systems.

• Greater physical memory capacity: The memory subsystem with its new Intel® Scalable Memory Interconnect

(Intel® SMI) supports up to eight times more memory than the previous-generation processor using standard

DDR3 memory components. Server manufacturers can take advantage of this enhancement to design systems

with more memory capacity for memory-intensive workloads and customers can leverage the volume economics

of DDR3 memory.

• Next-generation RAS and manageability features: The Intel Itanium processor 9300 series builds on the

mainframe-class RAS features of its predecessor, extending and enhancing the ability to detect, correct and

manage errors; add and replace components without downtime; and dynamically allocate resources among

multiple running partitions.

Systems based on the Intel Itanium processor 9300 series are binary compatible with existing software and are

designed to provide major performance improvements without the need for additional software optimization. New

Intel Itanium processors in development today are being designed for both socket and binary compatibility with

today’s Intel Itanium processor 9300 series-based systems and software. This will enable organizations to scale

performance and capacity through simple component upgrades and without software recompilation, so they can

continue to expand and adapt their mission-critical computing systems.

The Intel

Itanium

Processor 9300 Series

A Technical Overview for IT Decision-Makers

White Paper

The Intel® Itanium®

Processor 9300 Series

Summary of content (16 pages)

PAGE 1
The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series A Technical Overview for IT Decision-Makers White Paper The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Executive Summary The Intel® Itanium® processor family provides the foundation for mainframe-class computing systems that offers greater flexibility and better cost models than traditional mainframe and high-end RISC systems. The new Intel® Itanium® processor 9300 series delivers a major step forward in this processor family.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Table of Contents Overview of Key Architectural Advancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Higher Performance through Enhanced Thread-Level Parallelism (TLP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Higher Performance through Enhanced Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP) . . . . . .
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Overview of Key Architectural Advancements advancements that make individual logic gates more resistant to errors, The new Intel Itanium processor 9300 series is the world’s first processor to system-level advancements that help organizations add, remove and with more than two billion transistors, and Intel engineers have used this abundance of resources to integrate a variety of fundamental architectural improvements (Table 1).
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series for data from main memory. The newer processor supports switching However, one significant enhancement to the core architecture was for medium latency events and for spin-lock loops. These and other implemented.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Two Integrated Memory Controllers and an Intel® Scalable Memory Interconnect The Intel Itanium processor 9300 series implements true directory- Communication channels between the processor cores and main track of all owners and sharers for each line of cache using information memory have been dramatically improved. Each processor has two stored in main memory.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Better Energy Efficiency through Advanced Power and Thermal Management In any computing system, errors in data or processing can impact data reliability, system availability or both. There are basically two kinds of errors: Power consumption is increasingly important in today’s data centers, and considerable effort was devoted to optimizing performance per Watt in the Intel Itanium processor 9300 series.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series 1.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series • Memory Scrubbing (Patrol and Demand): The protections firmware continuously monitors memory errors. If it determines read. However, errors can occur to data or instructions in memory that a memory component is failing, a hardware engine can copy locations that are not accessed. If these errors accumulate, they can the contents of the failing component to another location.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Intel® QuickPath Interconnect RAS Features For example, a single dropped or lost packet often leads to a cascade The Intel QuickPath Interconnect offers extensive, multi-level protec- of lost packets resulting in a large number of transaction timeouts.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Manageability: Dynamic Partitioning and Hot Plug Components memory and I/O components, as well as dynamic reconfiguration of The Intel Itanium processor 9300 series includes a rich set of capa- and packet routing. parameters such as snoop control, interrupt routing, address decoding bilities for partitioning and managing system resources. These capabilities can help organizations maintain uninterrupted operation in response to error events.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Future Processor Generations bandwidth increase automatically as more processors are added, Future Intel Itanium processors already in development are being and memory capacity is up to eight times greater than systems built designed to provide binary-compatibility and socket-compatibility with with the previous-generation processor. System design is also simpli- the Intel Itanium processor 9300 series. fied.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Appendix A: Architectural Overview 6 MB L3 6 MB L3 L3 Core Core Caching agent Caching agent 6 MB 6 MB L3 P&T Controller Core Core Caching agent Caching agent Conﬁguration QPI Router 1 MB Directory Cache Home agent Home agent Memory controller Memory controller 1 MB Directory Cache Intel® Scalable Memory Interconnect (Intel® SMI) Processing Four cores per processor Individual cores are very similar to the cores in the previous I
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Appendix B: Table of RAS Features Intel® Itanium® Processor 9100 Series Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series • Enhanced L3 only L2, L3 and Directory • Enhanced Processor Onlining/Offlining: A processor can be functionally enabled or disabled without downtime to adjust available resources or to map out a failed component.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Appendix B: Table of RAS Features, continued RAS Capability Intel® Itanium® Processor 9100 Series Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series I/O Hub PCI Express* Hot Plug: PCIe cards can be physically added, removed or replaced without downtime. OEM-basedb OEM-basedb or Intel chipset required I/O Hub Hot Plug: I/O Hubs and/or associated I/O devices can be physically added, removed or replaced without downtime.
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White Paper: The Intel® Itanium® Processor 9300 Series Appendix C: Glossary of Useful RAS Terms RAS Reliability, Availability and Serviceability Reliability Assurance that computational results are correct. Errors are detected and corrected when possible and reported if they cannot be corrected. Availability Assurance that the system is up and running to support an organization’s computing needs.
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About the Authors Mohan Kumar, Senior Principal Engineer, Intel Architecture Group, Intel Corporation Rajesh Agny, Itanium Platform Marketing Manager, Data Center Group, Intel Corporation Mohan is responsible for Server Reliability, Availability and Serviceability Rajesh is responsible for marketing the Intel® Itanium® processor 9300 series and the associated platform ingredients. He has worked in the (RAS) in the Architecture and Planning organization of the Intel Digital Enterprise Group.