Radical Compute

Take the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series, add in Parallels* software and boom! A significant jump in worker productivity via massively improved virtualized workstation performance.

At its best, IT use translates directly to business value, an issue often lost in the ongoing preoccupation with new and innovative technology tools.

But by finding the right innovations to answer pressing business needs, IT organizations can directly impact the bottom line by helping users do their work faster and more easily.

For example, virtualizing complex multi-OS workloads has challenged IT for years, forcing users of high-end specialty workstations to adjust their workflow to the limitations of the technology.

Eliminating the myriad separate machines required to run these applications and uniting systems, workflows, and processes would create real business value—but until recently, there was no technological innovation available that could solve the problem.

Now, however, the virtualization capabilities available in the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series, used in conjunction with Parallels software, can significantly boost worker productivity by massively improving virtualized workstation performance.

Performance Challenges

The chief constraint has been virtualization’s ongoing difficulty in effectively handling I/O. In virtual machines, the interrupt process requires the virtual machine to exit to the VM manager and return back again each time a packet is processed, slowing performance considerably.

This problem is only exacerbated by the performance demands of high-end, complex applications, which essentially pile up more traffic behind an already crowded bottleneck.

That performance degradation makes it difficult for users of resource-intensive, graphically driven applications—such as those used by geoscientists and engineers in the oil and gas industry—to lower hardware and maintenance costs by virtualizing their workstations.

For example, engineers from Schlumberger, a leading oilfield service provider, run performance-demanding applications such as GeoFrame* and Petrel*, which help them analyze complex geologic and geophysical data to determine the viability of potential reservoirs, and optimize production at existing sites.

With GeoFrame running on Linux* and Petrel on Microsoft Windows*, Schlumberger engineers are forced to run these applications on two separate workstations, driving down productivity and increasing both power consumption and IT maintenance costs.

A New Paradigm

With the advent of Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based workstations running Parallels Workstation Extreme, virtualization software has opened new horizons with breakthrough graphics performance.

Schlumberger compared the concurrent performance of applications running on a virtualized Intel Xeon processor 5400 series-based workstation with the same setup on an Intel Xeon processor 5500-based machine. The results were astounding.

The first machine ran Petrel at full native speed, but performance for GeoFrame slowed enormously. While Petrel refreshed its graphics at a rate of 30 frames per second, GeoFrame crawled along at a graphics refresh rate of one frame every 19 seconds, an agonizingly slow performance.

When the group tested both applications on the Xeon processor 5500 series-based workstation, the results were striking: Both applications ran at full native speed, and both were able to refresh graphics at 30 frames per second—a 570-times improvement over the first workstation.

“Our engineers were blown away by the performance,” says Russ Sagert, Schlumberger’s Geoscience Technical Advisor for North America. “We hammered these machines with extreme workloads that stressed every aspect of the system. Amazingly, the new workstation based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series provided performance enabling this multiple OS, multiple application environment for the first time.”

Intel® VT – Elemental Component

The key element is Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel® VT-d), which enables direct assignment of graphics and network cards to virtual machines, enabling the machine to circumvent the interrupt and exit loop, and clear the previous performance problems.

Running in conjunction with Parallels Workstation Extreme, which effectively leverages Intel Virtualization Technology, including VT-d, the solution will revolutionize virtualization for high-end users.

“High-performance virtualization on Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based workstations is a game-changing capability,” says Sagert. “We can allocate multiple cores, up to 64 GB of memory, and a dedicated graphics card to each machine. The results are spectacular.”

Analyze, Accelerate

In the final analysis, moving to the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series of next-generation workstations does far more than cut costs. It impacts the way that work gets done.

If you have clients running the kind of resource-intensive, graphics-rich applications that traditionally slow to a crawl in a virtualized environment, consider the benefits of finally moving beyond the I/O barrier on a robust digital workbench.

A fully configured Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series-based workstation running Parallels Workstation Extreme delivers the performance level that makes virtualization a contender for these users.

A streamlined work interface, reduced office noise and clutter, and significant performance gains work on the user side. But the IT organization also gains benefits by lowering

• capital,
• management,
• support,
• space,
• and energy costs.

Moreover, the IT team can now standardize on a single OS image while addressing alternative requirements.

The ability to maximize computing and graphics power in a virtual environment gives the team the horsepower it needs to visualize and solve large-scale problems faster.

The overall result: Incisive analysis and accelerated time to discovery that don’t have to wait for the technology to catch up.