Upcoming Linux Tests With A $300 Broadwell-EP Xeon CPU

[Goddard]

What I don't understand is why these newer chips keep coming out and the clock speed is so low. 1.7 Ghz?

Anyone care to explain why this is better then a cheaper processor with a higher clock speed with the same core count?

[schmidtbag]

What I don't understand is why these newer chips keep coming out and the clock speed is so low. 1.7 Ghz?

Anyone care to explain why this is better then a cheaper processor with a higher clock speed with the same core count?

That's like asking why someone should buy a GPU with a clock of 1GHz and a couple thousand stream processors instead of a quad core CPU at 4GHz. Different workloads demand different specs. This is a Xeon; it's not meant to run the average desktop PC application. Why do you think ARM is getting so popular in the server market? Most ARM processors are clocked below 2GHz. They're ideal for tasks that aren't all that complex or time sensitive. Having 8 cores at 1.7GHz is more energy efficient for something like cloud hosting than 4 cores at 3.7GHz. It could also offer better performance; running tasks slowly in parallel can, at times, be faster than quickly running tasks in serial.

[torsionbar28]

That's like asking why someone should buy a GPU with a clock of 1GHz and a couple thousand stream processors instead of a quad core CPU at 4GHz. Different workloads demand different specs. This is a Xeon; it's not meant to run the average desktop PC application. Why do you think ARM is getting so popular in the server market? Most ARM processors are clocked below 2GHz. They're ideal for tasks that aren't all that complex or time sensitive. Having 8 cores at 1.7GHz is more energy efficient for something like cloud hosting than 4 cores at 3.7GHz. It could also offer better performance; running tasks slowly in parallel can, at times, be faster than quickly running tasks in serial.

^ All of this, plus server tasks tend to be inherently parallelized (one server serves multiple clients simultaneously) so more slower cores will give better performance than fewer faster cores. Desktop peecee workloads tend to be the exact opposite, single threaded applications, so on the desktop, fewer cores at higher clock will yield better performance than more cores at lower clock. It's all about choosing the right tool for the job. One size does not fit all.