Dell PowerEdge 6650

Processor Technology

Processor Tray

The processor tray is used to enable servicing of the processor board from the front of the chassis. Two levers mounted on the processor tray are used to disengage the processor board from the I/O board and allow it to slide into and out of the chassis.

NOTE: The cooling fans, memory riser boards, and the peripheral riser card must be disengaged from the processor board before it can be removed from the chassis.

Intel Xeon MP Processors

• Utilizes 0.18 micron fabrication technology
• Source synchronous Front Side Bus (FSB) with address clocked at 200MHz and data (8 bytes) clocked at 400MHz
• L2 cache on-chip 256KB
• L3 cache on-chip (512KB or 1MB)
• 603-pin PGA package in a ZIF socket
• 87 Watt maximum power provided by Voltage Regulator Modules (VRM9.0)
• "Hyper-Threading Technology"
  • Duplicated registers within the CPU allow simultaneous execution of two threads.
  • Software on an ACPI compliant OS will see two virtual processors.
• No termination required for non-populated CPUs (CPU socket 1 must be populated first)
• 3 levels of integrated "on-die" cache
  • Level 1 Execution Trace cache: provides fast access to decoded micro-op instructions keeping IntelŪ NetBurst micro-architecture pipeline full.
  • Level 2 Advanced Transfer cache: this runs at the full speed of the processor core complementing its demand for instructions and data.
  • Level 3 Cache: provides a low-latency path to memory, reducing system bus traffic for large server instructions and data sets.
• Tight integration with IntelŪ NetBurst micro-architecture
  • 2X bandwidth of PentiumŪ III Xeon processor 2-Level cache architecture (51.2 GB/s versus 28.8 GB/s)
• Up to 1.25MB of total (L2 + L3) integrated, unified cache

NOTE: Blank holders must be placed in a processor slot on the processor tray if a processor is not installed. This ensures proper airflow through the system.

Hyper-Threading

What is Hyper-Threading with Intel Xeon processors?

• One physical processor looks like two logical processors to the OS and applications
• Provides a performance boost for future Intel NetBurst micro-architecture family processors on multi-threading and multi-tasking operations
• Hyper-Threading Technology delivers:
  • Two logical processors that can execute different tasks simultaneously using shared hardware resources
  • An average improvement in CPU resource utilization of 40% which yields higher processing throughput
• Hyper-Threading allows the processor to use on die resources that would have otherwise been idle.

NOTE: By default the PowerEdge 6600 and 6650 will ship with the Hyper-Threading option enabled. To disable this option enter the System Setup Utility (BIOS), select the processor information field, then disable the logical processor option.

Hyper-Threading and Operating Systems

The current operating systems that are supported on Dell platforms will react differently to Hyper-Threading technology. Below is a listing of supported operating systems and the way they respond to Hyper-Threading.

Operating Systems

Characteristics

	Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 NetWare 5.x Red Hat Linux 7.2 Professional	Does not recognize Hyper-Threading logical processors. Some Service Packs (or other operating system updates) may change this; check with the OS vendor for more details.
	Microsoft Windows 2000	Recognizes both logical and physical processors, but is not able to distinguish between them.
		NOTE: As Windows 2000 cannot distinguish between logical and actual processors, Hyper-Threading will impact licensing models if enabled.
	Microsoft .NET NetWare 6.X SP1 Red Hat Linux 7.2 Advanced Server Red Hat Linux 8.0	Distinguishes between physical and logical processors. Optimizes for Hyper-Threading.

NOTE: The Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Novell NetWare 5.X (and earlier versions), and Red Hat Linux 7.2 Pro (and earlier versions) operating systems do not recognize Hyper-Threading logical processor technology.

Processor Voltage Regulator Modules (VRMs)

NOTE: The PowerEdge 6650 requires 4 processor VRMs to function as a quad processor system.