Dell EMC® PowerEdge™ MX750 Servers and MySQL Application Performance Gains with PCIe® 4.0 Technology
Download PDFMon, 16 Jan 2023 21:43:10 -0000
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Summary
This document summarizes a MySQL application performance comparison between the Dell EMC PowerEdge MX750 (with PCIe 4.0 technology) and the MX740 (with PCIe 3.0 technology). All performance and characteristics discussed are based on performance testing conducted in KIOXIA America, Inc. application labs. Results are accurate as of 5/1/21. Ad Ref #000072
Introduction
Dell EMC PowerEdge MX750 servers are based on the current PCIe 4.0 interface and the latest 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Ice Lake1 PCIe 4.0 scalable processors. Generationally, servers with PCIe 4.0 enable twice the bandwidth versus the previous PCIe 3.0 technology so peripheral devices, such as SSDs, GPUs and NICs can access data faster than ever before. The speed upgrade is well-suited for data-intensive and computational applications such as cloud computing, databases, data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, container orchestration and media streaming. A faster PCIe interface enables today’s powerful CPUs, such as Ice Lake CPUs, to be continually fed with data.
To validate application performance and productivity gains that can be achieved with the PCIe 4.0 interface, KIOXIA Corporation, a leader in PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, compared the performance of a MySQL database application running on an MX750 server with PCIe 4.0 SSD technology versus an MX740 server with PCIe 3.0 SSD technology. The test process and results are presented.
System and Application Test Scenario
The tests utilized an operational, high-performance MySQL database workload that was based on comparable TPC-C™ benchmarks created by HammerDB software2. The MySQL database is commonly used in hyperscale and enterprise environments, and widely deployed on PowerEdge servers. It supports key applications such as webserver, online transactional processing (OLTP), e- commerce and data warehousing, and is the most widely deployed open source database globally (ranked number two overall3).
The tests on each server platform were conducted with PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0 SSDs that measured transactions per minute (TPM), average read/write latency and CPU utilization. For the MX750 server, four (4) KIOXIA CM6 Series PCIe 4.0 enterprise NVMe® SSDs were deployed. For the MX740 server, four (4) PCIe 3.0 specification-compliant enterprise NVMe SSDs were deployed. The test results provide a real-world scenario of TPM performance, average read/write latency and CPU utilization when running a MySQL database application using comparable equipment and performing queries against it. Supporting details include a description of the test criteria, the set-up and associated test procedures, a visual representation of the test results, and a test analysis.
Test Criteria:
The hardware and software equipment used for these tests included:
Server Configurations:
Server Setup 1: One (1) Dell EMC PowerEdge MX750 dual socket server with two (2) Intel Xeon Ice Lake PCIe
4.0 CPUs, featuring 28 processing cores, 2.0 GHz frequency, and 512 gigabytes4 (GB) of DDR4 RAM
Server Setup 2: One (1) Dell EMC PowerEdge MX740 dual socket server with two (2) Intel Xeon Cascade Lake5 PCIe 3.0 CPUs, featuring 24 processing cores, 2.2 GHz frequency, and 384 GB of DDR4 RAM
- Operating System: CentOS™ v8.3
- Application: MySQL v8.0 (database size of 440 GB)
- Test Software: Comparable TPC-C benchmark tests generated through HammerDB v3.3 test software
- Storage Devices (Table 1):
SSD Setup 1: Four (4) KIOXIA CM6-V Series (3 DWPD6) PCIe 4.0 enterprise NVMe SSDs with 3.2 terabyte4 (TB) capacities
SSD Setup 2: Four (4) PCIe 3.0 specification-compliant (3 DWPD) enterprise NVMe SSDs with 3.2 TB capacities
Specifications | CM6-V Series | PCIe 3.0-compliant |
Interface | PCIe 4.0 NVMe (U.3) | PCIe 3.0 NVMe (U.2) |
Capacity | 3.2 TB | 3.2 TB |
Form Factor | 2.5-inch7 (15mm) | 2.5-inch (15mm) |
NAND Flash Type | BiCS4 3D NAND (96-layer) | V-NAND |
Drive Writes per Day (DWPD) | 3 (5 years) | 3 (5 years) |
Power | 18W | 20W |
DRAM Allocation | 96 GB | 96 GB |
Table 1: SSD specifications and set-up parameters
PLEASE NOTE: The MySQL database was limited to 96 GB of RAM. Although the total capacity available to the test system differs (512 GB for server setup 1 versus 384 GB for server setup 2), the actual amount of capacity used by each server setup was expected to be the same and not contribute to any performance advantage8.
Set-up & Test Procedures
Set-up: The MX750 and MX740 servers were setup with the CentOS™ v8.3 operating system and MySQL v8.0 software. The MySQL database was set to a maximum of 96 GB of DRAM and was placed into a RAID10 set. RAID10 was selected because it is commonly used in data center environments. Once each SSD array was initialized (PCIe 4.0 SSDs and PCIe 3.0 SSDs), the RAID10 set was formatted to the XFS file system. A 440 GB database was then loaded into each server setup (MX750/MX740) using HammerDB test software. Once the database was loaded, it was then backed up. Before each test run, the 440 GB test database was restored to the exact same state for each run to control the test inputs and database size.
Test Procedures: The first set of tests (TPM, latency and CPU utilization) were run on the MX750 server. The comparable TPC-C workload utilized HammerDB software to run the test. The four (4) KIOXIA CM6-V Series SSDs were then placed into a RAID10 set and the tests were conducted. Multiple iterations of each test were run to determine an optimal configuration of virtual users. A configuration of 480 virtual users delivered the highest TPM performance numbers. See Test Results section.
The first set of tests were run on the MX740 server. The comparable TPC-C workload utilized HammerDB software to run the test. The four (4) PCIe 3.0 specification-compliant SSDs were then placed into a RAID10 set and the tests were conducted. Multiple iterations of each test were run and a configuration of 480 virtual users delivered the highest TPM performance numbers. See Test Results section.
Test Results
The tests were conducted with the MX750 server (Ice Lake CPUs with PCIe 4.0 technology) versus an MX740 server (Cascade Lake with PCIe 3.0 technology), with the results recorded. For the TPM result, the higher the test value, the better the result. For the latency and CPU utilization results, the lower the test value, the better the result.
Transactions Per Minute
In an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database environment, TPM is a measure of how many transactions in the TPC-C transaction profile that are being executed per minute. HammerDB software, executing the TPC-C transaction profile, randomly performs new order transactions and randomly executes additional transaction types such as payment, order status, delivery and stock levels. This benchmark simulates an OLTP environment where there are a large number of users that conduct simple, yet short transactions that require sub-second response times and return relatively few records. The TPM test results:
TPM: MySQL Comparable TPC-C Workload | MX750 (PCIe 4.0) | MX740 (PCIe 3.0) |
TPM (higher is better) | 981,036 | 632,052 |
Advantage | +55% | - |
Average Read and Write Latency
Latency is the delay in time before a storage device completes a data transaction following an instruction from the host for that request, which can greatly affect application performance and the user experience. Application response time often has built-in latency between the user and the server, so maintaining low-latency within the server will usually translate into an overall better user experience. The read and write latency test results:
Latency: MySQL Comparable TPC-C Workload | MX750 (PCIe 4.0) | MX740 (PCIe 3.0) |
Average Read Latency (lower is better) | 0.09 ms | 0.11 ms |
Advantage | -18% | - |
Average Write Latency (lower is better) | 0.01 ms | 0.06 ms |
Advantage | -83% | - |
CPU Utilization
In general, CPU utilization represents a percentage of the total amount of computing tasks that are handled by the CPU, and is another estimation of system performance. For these tests, CPU utilization was measured to determine the unused CPU that is available for additional tasks, and where a lower result is better. The Dell MX750 server with the Ice Lake CPU has a 20% instructions per cycle (IPC) uplift over the previous CPU generation, which enables it to complete more instructions per clock cycle. The combination of higher transistor density (with the 10 nanometer fabrication process) and PCIe 4.0 technology results in faster storage transactions.
In this test scenario, the Ice Lake CPU was less taxed when running the test workload versus the MX740 server with the Cascade Lake CPU delivering about 46% utilization versus 89% utilization with the Cascade Lake CPU, as evident from the results:
Test Analysis
The test results validated that a PowerEdge MX750 server with PCIe 4.0 technology, such as KIOXIA CM6-V Series SSDs, delivers about 55% better TPM performance versus the previous generation server with PCIe 3.0 technology. Almost a million transactions per minute were delivered within this PCIe 4.0 server/storage platform, which in turn, enables systems and applications based on the PCIe 4.0 interface to run at higher performance. In addition, PCIe 4.0 technology delivers faster access to data per the latency results, enabling data transactions to be completed faster.
Though the total capacity available to each test system differed (512 GB for server setup 1 versus 384 GB for server setup 2), the actual amount of capacity used by each server setup for the MySQL database was the same and did not contribute to any performance advantage.
It should also be noted that the MX740 server with the Cascade Lake CPU was slightly faster in frequency than the MX750 server with the Ice Lake CPU (2.20 GHz vs 2.0GHz), but had less processing cores (24 vs 28). As it related to the testing process, system performance was roughly comparable between the two test systems. Therefore, the combination of higher PCIe 4.0 performance in both the Intel Ice Lake CPU and the KIOXIA CM6-V Series SSDs enabled significantly more transactions per minute and better read/write latency.
At 46% CPU utilization, the MX750 server with the Ice Lake CPU and PCIe 4.0 technology was less taxed when running the test workload versus the MX740 server. At 89% CPU utilization, the MX740 server with Cascade CPU and PCIe 3.0 technology was nearing the maximum workload leaving very little room for the CPU to address additional tasks.
CM6 Series SSD Overview
The CM6 Series is KIOXIA’s 3rd generation enterprise-class NVMe SSD product line that features significantly improved performance from PCIe Gen3 to PCIe Gen4, 30.72TB maximum capacity, dual-port for high availability, 1 DWPD for read-intensive applications (CM6-R Series) and 3 DWPD for mixed use applications (CM6-V Series), up to a 25-watt power envelope and a host of security options – all of which are geared to support a wide variety of workload requirements.
Summary
The test results presented validate that a Dell EMC PowerEdge MX750 PCIe 4.0 enabled server with KIOXIA CM6-V Series SSDs effectively delivered much faster TPM performance for MySQL database workloads than a comparable PCIe
3.0 system/server configuration.
Notes
1 Ice Lake is the codename for Intel Corporation’s 3rd generation Xeon scalable server processors.
2 HammerDB is benchmarking and load testing software that is used to test popular databases. It simulates the stored workloads of multiple virtual users against specific databases to identify transactional scenarios and derive meaningful information about the data environment, such as performance comparisons. TPC Benchmark C is a supported OLTP benchmark that includes a mix of five concurrent transactions of different types, and nine types of tables with a wide range of record and population sizes and where results are measured in transactions per minute.
3 Source: https://db-engines.com/en/ranking, January 2021.
4 Definition of capacity - KIOXIA Corporation defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1Gbit = 230 bits = 1,073,741,824 bits, 1GB = 230 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes and 1TB = 240 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
5 Cascade Lake is the codename for Intel Corporation’s 2nd generation Xeon scalable server processors.
6 Drive Write(s) per Day (DWPD): One full drive write per day means the drive can be written and re-written to full capacity once a day, every day, for the specified lifetime. Actual results may vary due to system configuration, usage, and other factors.
7 2.5-inch indicates the form factor of the SSD and not the drive’s physical size.
8 Modifying DRAM usage can impact performance. The purpose of this testing was to stress SSD performance. 96GB of DRAM was allocated to prevent the database from being cached into DRAM as that would reduce stress on the storage devices.
Trademarks
CentOS is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Dell, Dell EMC and PowerEdge are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. MySQL is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates. NVMe is a registered trademark of NVM Express, Inc. PCIe is a registered trademark of PCI-SIG. TPC-C is a trademark of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. All company names, product names and service names may be the trademarks of their respective companies.
Disclaimers
© 2021 Dell, Inc. All rights reserved. Information in this application brief, including product specifications, tested content, and assessments are current and believed to be accurate as of the date that the document was published, but is subject to change without prior notice. Technical and application information contained here is subject to the most recent applicable product specifications.
Related Documents
Next-Gen Dell PowerEdge Servers Deliver Encryption Protection without a Performance Hit Using KIOXIA PCIe
Tue, 17 Jan 2023 06:21:19 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Summary
This document is a summary of the performance comparison between SSDs that use encryption enabled vs. encryption disabled in a Dell PowerEdge server with PCIe 4.0 technology. All performance and characteristics discussed are based on performance testing conducted in the Americas Data Center (CET) labs. Results are accurate as of 5/1/21. Ad Ref #PROJ-000072
Introduction
Data encryption has been used for decades in data center computing environments to protect both data in transit and data at rest. In these environments, clients generate data continuously (24 hours per day, 7 days per week), and data collection continues to grow. This massive data generation comes from many different client devices such as desktops and laptops, smartphones and tablets, as well as IoT devices such as robots, drones, machines, and surveillance cameras, whether on-premises or ‘at-the-edge’ of the data center network (where data is captured and processed).
Massive data generation makes it more important than ever for companies to protect what they’ve captured both for short-term use and archival purposes, especially with technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that can help maximize the value of captured/archived data. Companies are turning more to encrypting data stored in their data centers to protect business-critical and sensitive information from unauthorized parties and hackers.
With each new generation of hardware and software that is produced, coupled with the exponential growth of data, it is critical for encryption methods to keep pace with technological advances. An ideal solution is to enable encryption so that access speed is comparable as if encryption was disabled, thereby delivering optimal system performance. The ability to protect data through encryption without experiencing performance degradation is the basis of this brief.
Data Encryption Performance Issues
Data encryption is the process of taking digital content (such as a document or email) and translating it into an unreadable format so that clients with a ‘secret key’ or password are the only ones that can view, access or read it. This helps protect the confidentiality of digital data stored on computer systems or transmitted over wireless networks and the Internet. A good example is when a smartphone is used for an ATM transaction or online purchase - encryption protects the information being transmitted.
Being a calculation-intensive operation, encryption is limited in use because of the amount of time and CPU cycles which can be lost to encrypting and decrypting data. These limitations may cause reduced system and application-level performance challenges that not only affect the applications themselves, but also the customer experience. To reduce CPU cycles being used for encryption, storage manufacturers have created devices that support encryption protocols inside of the drive itself. These drives are called Self Encrypting Drives1 (SEDs).
An SED implements on-board crypto-processers and uses an AES2-256 cryptographic module and media encryption key to encrypt plain-text data traversing through the SSD to the media inside of the SSD itself. This process ensures that data at rest is encrypted at a hardware layer to prevent unauthorized access.
System and Application Test Scenario
Mainstream servers and SSDs deployed with the PCIe 4.0 interface and NVMe protocol are becoming commercially available and typically deliver significant performance advantages over previous PCIe interface generations. Given the importance of encryption, delivering a solution that provides this capability without compromising performance was an SSD design goal for KIOXIA.
To find out if encryption leads to a performance hit, KIOXIA conducted transactions per minute (TPM) tests in a Dell® PCIe
4.0 server lab environment with and without encryption enabled. The test configuration included a Dell EMC PowerEdge R7525 rack server (with 3rd generation AMD EPYC™ CPUs) deployed with KIOXIA CM6 Series PCIe 4.0 enterprise NVMe SSDs that support the TCG-OPAL3 specification for SEDs. During the initial server boot-up, hardware level encryption was enabled throughout the BIOS on a Dell PowerEdge RAID Card (PERC) Model H755N. The ‘logical volume’ was created as an ‘encrypted volume’ that enables TCG-OPAL encryption across the KIOXIA CM6 Series SSDs, also creating a secured logical device.
The tests utilized an operational, high-performance Microsoft® SQL Server™ database workload based on comparable TPC- C™ benchmarks created by HammerDB software4. Supporting details include a description of the benchmark test criteria and the set-up and associated test procedures, as well as a visual representation of the test results, and a test analysis.
The test results provide a real-world scenario of the effects that encryption has on TPM performance when running a Microsoft SQL Server database using comparable equipment and performing queries against it. In this test configuration, a Dell EMC PowerEdge 7525 server utilizes KIOXIA CM6 Series enterprise SSDs when running this database application to demonstrate performance of a system with and without data encryption.
Test Criteria:
The hardware and software equipment used for these encryption tests included:
- Dell R7525 Server: One (1) dual socket server with two (2) AMD EPYC 7352 processors, featuring 24 processing cores, 2.3 GHz frequency, and 240 gigabytes5 (GB) of DDR4 RAM
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows® Server 2019
- Application: Microsoft SQL Server 2019.150.1600.8 – Database size of 440GB
- Test Software: Comparable TPC-C benchmark tests generated through HammerDB v4.0 test software
- PCIe 4.0 NVMe RAID Card: Dell PERC H755N
- Storage Devices (Table 1): Three (3) KIOXIA CM6-R Series PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs with 1.6 terabyte5 (TB) capacities
Specifications | CM6-R Series |
Interface | PCIe 4.0 NVMe U.3 |
Capacity | 1.6TB |
Form Factor | 2.5-inch6 (15mm) |
NAND Flash Type | BiCS FLASH™3D flash memory |
Drive Writes per Day7 (DWPD) | 3 (5 years) |
Power | 18W |
DRAM Allocation | 96GB |
Set-up & Test Procedures
Set-up: The test system was configured using the hardware and software equipment outlined above. An unsecured RAID5 set was created on the Dell H755N PERC using three (3) CM6-R Series SSDs with the SED option. RAID5 was selected because it is commonly used in data center environments. Once the SSD array was initialized, the RAID5 set was formatted to a Microsoft Windows NT file system (NTFS). The Microsoft SQL Server application was then installed and limited to 96GB of memory. A 440GB database was then loaded using HammerDB test software.
Test Procedures: The first test was run with encryption disabled. The comparable TPC-C workload utilized HammerDB software to run the test. The three (3) KIOXIA CM6-R Series SSDs were placed into a RAID5 set and the test was conducted with encryption disabled. Multiple iterations of the test were run on both configurations to determine an optimal configuration of virtual users. Both test scenarios showed the highest TPM performance when running a configuration of 480 virtual users. See Test Results section.
The second test was then run with encryption enabled. The RAID5 set was destroyed and a secure RAID5 set based on the TCG-OPAL specification was created. The three (3) KIOXIA CM6-R Series SSDs were placed into the secure RAID5 set and the same test was conducted with encryption enabled. The objective of this test was to showcase how the application and system provide the same level of performance whether data was encrypted or unencrypted. The comparable TPC-C workload was run using HammerDB test software. The same test process for this configuration was repeated to obtain the TPM performance results with encryption enabled. See Test Results section.
The TPM tests were conducted, with and without encryption enabled, with the performance result recorded. As it relates to TPM, the higher the test value, the better the result.
The CPU utilization tests were also conducted, with and without encryption enabled, with the result recorded. In this test instance, the lower the test value, the better the utilization.
Transactions Per Minute
In an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database environment, TPM is a measure of how many transactions in the TPC-C transaction profile are being executed per minute. HammerDB software, executing the HammerDB TPC-C transaction profile, randomly performs new order transactions and randomly executes additional transaction types such as payment, order status, delivery and stock levels. This benchmark simulates an OLTP environment where there are a large number of users that conduct simple, yet short transactions that require sub-second response times and return relatively few records. The TPM test results:
CM6-R Series Tests: SQL Server Comparable TPC-C Workload | Without Encryption | With Encryption |
Transactions per Minute | 720,672 | 720,697 |
Performance Difference | - | 0% |
In both test cases, the margin of deviation when measuring the TPM, with or without encryption, was close to 0%, which implies no discernable difference in application level performance between the two approaches.
CPU Utilization
In general, CPU utilization represents a percentage of the total amount of computing tasks that are handled by the CPU, and is another estimation of system performance. Some forms of encryption require CPU cycles to encrypt and decrypt data on the storage media itself which can lead to a performance impact. For these tests, CPU utilization was measured to ensure the CPU was not incurring any extra processing for encryption, which should be handled in hardware at the RAID controller and SSD levels. The hardware based configuration from Dell with KIOXIA CM6-R Series SSDs enables the R7525 server CPU to be utilized for compute tasks instead of encryption. The graphs below show the CPU utilization was comparable (82.8% utilization without encryption and 79.5% utilization with encryption):
Test Analysis
The test results validated that KIOXIA CM6-R Series SSDs enabled the Dell R7525 rack server to deliver nearly identical TPM performance whether encryption was enabled or not. This particular PCIe 4.0 NVMe server/storage configuration was able to deliver more than 720,000 TPM without any TPM-related performance degradation regardless of encryption being enabled or disabled. As a result, systems and applications that use SSDs based on the TCG-OPAL standard are enabled to utilize the CPU for performance tasks instead of encryption tasks.
Whether hardware encryption was enabled or disabled, there was about 3% deviation of the CPU utilization during the testing process which demonstrated that the CPU wasn’t processing any extra workloads for encryption.
CM6 Series SSD Overview
The CM6 Series is KIOXIA’s 3rd generation enterprise-class NVMe SSD product line that features significantly improved performance from PCIe Gen3 to PCIe Gen4, 30.72TB maximum capacity, dual-port for high availability, 1 DWPD for read-intensive applications (CM6-R Series) and 3 DWPD for mixed use applications (CM6- V Series), up to a 25-watt power envelope and a host of security options – all of which are geared to support a wide variety of workload requirements. The CM6 Series SSD architecture has encryption built into the data path so as the drive is reading and writing from NAND flash memory, the encryption or decryption is performed in a way that it has no material impact to performance9.
Summary
Encryption becomes more important than ever to secure data. An ideal encrypted solution does not impact application or system performance. The test results presented validate that a PowerEdge R7525 PCIe 4.0 enabled server with KIOXIA CM6-R Series SSDs effectively delivered identical TPM performance of more than 720,000 TPM, whether encryption was enabled or not. As data usage scales over time, performance is not affected by encryption no matter how much data is being encrypted at rest. CPU utilization was also comparable with or without encryption enabled which validated that the CPU (at approximately 80% utilization) was not impacted when encryption was enabled. The Dell EMC and KIOXIA server solution delivered encryption protection without a performance hit!!!
Notes
1 Self-Encrypting Drives encrypt all data to SSDs and decrypt all data from SSDs, via an alphanumeric key (or password protection) to prevent data theft. It continuously scrambles and descrambles data written to and retrieved from SSDs.
2 The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2001.
3 Developed by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a not-for-profit international standards organization, the OPAL specification is used for applying hardware-based encryption to solid state drives and often referred to as TCG-OPAL.
4 HammerDB is benchmarking and load testing software that is used to test popular databases. It simulates the stored workloads of multiple virtual users against specific databases to identify transactional scenarios and derive meaningful information about the data environment, such as performance comparisons. TPC Benchmark C is a supported OLTP benchmark that includes a mix of five concurrent transactions of different types, and nine types of tables with a wide range of record and population sizes and where results are measured in transactions per minute.
5 Definition of capacity - KIOXIA Corporation defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1Gbit = 230 bits = 1,073,741,824 bits, 1GB = 230 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes and 1TB = 240 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.
6 2.5-inch indicates the form factor of the SSD and not the drive’s physical size.
7 Drive Write(s) per Day: One full drive write per day means the drive can be written and re-written to full capacity once a day, every day, for the specified lifetime. Actual results may vary due to system configuration, usage, and other factors.
8 Read and write speed may vary depending on the host device, read and write conditions, and the file size.
9 Variances in individual test queries may occur in normal test runs. Average performance over time was consistent for encryption enabled and encryption disabled.
Trademarks
AMD, EPYC and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Dell, Dell EMC and PowerEdge are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Dell Inc. Microsoft, Windows and SQL Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. NVMe is a registered trademark of NVM Express, Inc. PCIe is a registered trademark of PCI-SIG. TPC-C is a trademark of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. All company names, product names and service names may be the trademarks of their respective companies.
Disclaimers
© 2021 Dell, Inc. All rights reserved. Information in this performance brief, including product specifications, tested content, and assessments are current and believed to be accurate as of the date that the document was published, but is subject to change without prior notice. Technical and application information contained here is subject to the most recent applicable product specifications.
Dell Next Generation PowerEdge Servers: Designed for PCIe Gen4 to Deliver Future Ready Bandwidth
Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:18:59 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Summary
PCIe is the primary interface for connecting various peripherals in a server. The Next Generation of Dell PowerEdge servers have been designed keeping PCIe Gen4 in mind. PCIe Gen4 effectively doubles the throughput available per lane compared to PCIe Gen3.
The PCIe Interface
PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) is a high- speed bus standard interface for connecting various peripherals to the CPU. This standard is maintained and developed by the PCI- SIG (PCI-Special Interest Group), a group of more than 900 companies. In today’s world of servers, PCIe is primary interface for connecting peripherals. It has numerous advantages over the earlier standards, being faster, more robust and very flexible. These advantages have cemented the importance of PCIe.
PCIe Gen 3 was the third major iteration of this standard. Dell PowerEdge 14G systems were designed keeping PCIe Gen 3 in min PCIe Gen3 can carry a bit rate of 8 Gigatransfers per second (GT/s). After considering the overhead of the encoding scheme, this works out to an effective delivery of 985 MB/s per lane, in each direction. A PCIe Gen3 slot with 8 lanes (x8) can have a total bandwidth of 7.8 GB/s.
PCIe Gen 4 is the fourth major iteration of the PCIe standard. This generation doubles the throughput per lane to 16 GT/s. This works out to an effective throughput of 1.97 GB/s per lane in each direction, and 15.75GB/s for a x8 PCIe Gen4 slot.
Designing for PCIe Gen4
The Next Generation of Dell PowerEdge servers were designed with a new PSU Layout. One of the key reasons this was done was to simplify enabling PCIe Gen4. A key element in PCIe performance is the length of PCIe traces. With the new system layout, a main goal was to shorten the overall PCIe trace lengths in the topology, including traces in the motherboard. By positioning PSU’s at both edges, the I/O traces to connectors can be shortened for both processors. This is the optimal physical layout for PCIe Gen 4 and will enable even faster speeds for future platforms. The shorter PCIe traces translate into better system costs and improved Signal Integrity for more reliable performance across a broad variety of customer applications. Another advantage of the split PSU is the balanced airflow that results. The split PSU layout helps to balance the system airflow, reduce PSU operating temperatures, and allows for PCIe Gen4 card support and thus an overall more optimal system design layout.
Figure 1 - Figures showing the 14G server layout to the left and the balanced airflow of the next gen Dell PowerEdge platforms to the right.
2nd and 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ Processors
Next Generation Dell PowerEdge servers with AMD processors are designed for PCIe Gen4. The 2nd and 3rd Generation AMD EPYC processors support the PCIe Gen4 standard allowing for the maximum utilization of this available bandwidth. A single socket 2nd or 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors have 128 available PCIe Gen4 lanes for use. This allows for great flexibility in design. 128 lanes also give plenty of bandwidth for many peripherals to take advantage of the high core count CPUs.
The dual socket platform offers an additional level of flexibility to system designers. In the standard configuration, 128 PCIe Gen4 lanes are available for peripherals. The rest of the lanes are used for inter-socket communication. Some of these inter-socket xGMI2 lanes can be repurposed to add an additional 32 lanes. This gives a total of 160 PCIe Gen4 lanes for peripherals (Figure 2). This flexibility allows for a wide variety of configurations and maximum CPU-peripheral bandwidth.
Figure 2 - Diagram showing PCIe lanes in a 2-socket configuration
3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
Intel highlighted that the next generation of processors will deliver performance-optimized features for a range of key workloads. Increased memory bandwidth, a new high-performance Sunny Cove core architecture, increased processor core count and support for PCIe Gen4 will enhance performance across different disciplines, including life sciences, material science and weather modeling. These processors will be available throughout the Intel products found within the PowerEdge portfolio of servers.
Conclusion
PowerEdge servers continue to deliver best-in-class features. The new PowerEdge servers have support for the higher speed PCIe Gen4, with innovative designs to improve signal integrity and chassis airflow.