![bandon1[1]](http://www.wegotserved.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bandon11_thumb.jpg "bandon1[1]")
Rewind to March’s CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany this year and you may remember Intel announcing the launch of the Bandon platform. Designed specifically for servers and networked storage appliances in the home and small office, Intel brought together its single-core D410 and dual-core D510 processors with the 82801IR I/O Controller to create a low cost, scalable package for manufacturers. Benefits for consumers included low power consumption, support for multiple eSATA and USB drives and at the top of the heap, a lower retail price point. Intel’s previous attempt at creating a home server platform based on the Celeron 400 processor in 2007 (the Intel Entry Level Storage System SS4200-E, codenamed “Helena Island”) gained mixed reviews, with only Fujitsu-Siemens getting behind the platform in volume with the SCALEO Home Server.
The prospects for Bandon appear much brighter, however and this week Intel celebrated strong adoption of their latest platform by announcing enhancements to the Bandon specification, replacing the Atom D410 and D510 processors with new D425 and D525 processors running at 1.8GHz, alongside support for 4GB DDR3 RAM.
We caught up with Intel’s Product Line Manager for Storage, Dinesh Rao, to find out more about the refreshed Bandon platform and discuss the challenges and opportunities both Intel and their customers face in driving adoption of servers and networked storage appliances in the home and workplace.
WGS: We’ve heard the announcement about the new Intel Atom D425 and D525 processors this week, but a 0.2GHz speed increase seems an incremental update. Why make the change?
DR: Well, the first thing to say is that since we launched the Bandon platform in March at CeBIT, we’ve seen a lot of support from customers. Companies such as Acer, LaCie, QNAP and many others have adopted the platform and its definitely gaining acceptance across the industry. As you know, at Intel we launch a product and then will refresh it during its lifecycle so you can treat this week’s announcement and the frequency improvements as a refresh of the platform. It’s fair to say that the speed improvement is an incremental change, but the support for DDR3 memory is perhaps more important. There have been huge changes in memory prices over the last few months, and customers are telling us that DDR3 is now dropping in price significantly, so they want DDR3 support.
WGS: Sure, but DDR3 is still priced at a premium to DDR2, isn’t it? I mean, the average consumer won’t get the same pricing as a HP or Acer, but off the shelf, it’s still more expensive?
DR: Actually, we’re hearing that the opposite is true. We’re now at the point where DDR3 is cheaper than DDR2, especially given the volume pricing that our customers receive. It’s important for us to work with partners to reduce their BOM (bill of materials) costs as much as possible, and the move to DDR3 does this as well as ensure there’s greater longevity and support for the products they build.
WGS: So what kind of real world performance improvements are we likely to see from the new processors?
DR: In terms of benchmarks? The new processors run at 1.8GHz, so that’s roughly at 10% performance gain over the previous models. That’s taking into account the processor performance alone.
WGS: How about DDR3 support? How does that translate into a benefit for home servers and networked storage devices?
DR: Well, it’s tough to quantify the performance impact of the DDR3 in storage. The key benefit is reduced cost – you know, the refreshed platform is completely pin compatible (with the previous generation) so all the time we’re reducing cost. That’s why the DDR3 memory support is perhaps more important than the processor speed increase.
WGS: We’ve talked to a number of manufacturers recently who have released Atom-based hardware, and there seems to be no clear picture on the selection of a single or dual-core Atom for their hardware. Some say there is little price difference, so you may as well take the dual-core, whilst others say there is little performance difference, so they’ve gone with the D410. Is there a need for two SKUs in this category?
DR: It depends on the target segment. SMB-focused customers are demanding much higher performance, especially for devices with multiple Gigabit (networking) links. These devices can take advantage of a dual-core processor from an I/O perspective, so there’s a real benefit there.
WGS: There still seems to be confusion on devices with a single Gigabit link though. Take Acer, who are releasing both dual and single-core variants of their Aspire easyStore Home Server in the USA, but only the single-core model in Europe.
DR: You know, customers have different requirements. Some only want the best, and they’ll always pick a dual-core processor whereas others are building to a lower cost. It’s important for us to be able to offer flexibility though, and that’s why we have both single and dual-core processors available, so we can meet individual customer’s needs.
WGS: So back to performance – what difference will we see between the (single-core) D425 and (dual-core) D525?
DR: You may have seen the results we published a while ago on video transcoding performance between the single and dual-core Atoms. We were really surprised at the results as we didn’t think there would be such a difference. We found an 85% improvement in video transcoding due to hyperthreading (on the D510).
WGS: That’s certainly a big difference. How about in regular day to day activities – file transfers, typical server tasks?
DR: The last set of benchmarks we ran saw around an 11% improvement in I/O.
WGS: But that was on the D410 and D510, right?
DR: Yes, that’s right.
WGS: So what about the new models? Should we expect the same improvement gains?
DR: Yes, there or thereabouts.
