silly me, let me rephrase:

is any one seriously looking at the 8-way in addition to Linchi?

Andy, wow, that sucks, too bad AMD does not sell a socket module with the processors disabled, leaving only the memory controller and HT ports functional.

Don: good of you to look into this. Even though the Itanium 1.6GHz and Opteron 2.3GHz are about the same on SPEC CPU 2006 integer (13-14 base), I suspect the Opteron will do better on most SQL code, because SQL code is heavy on logic, and cannot easily benefit from the wide Itanium architecture. It would be nice if some one from MS could show us the assembly output on some relevent SQL engine code. Its also too bad that Intel is so far behind on getting Itanium to the current generation process, 90nm does not cut the mustard today. The DL785 will also have an advantage at 8 sockets 32 cores versus 16 socket, 32 core (32 or 64 threads) Itanium because the AMD architecture is soft NUMA, while the Itantium will have hard NUMA overhead. The Itanium could potentially have an advantage in high call volume apps, because it is the one characteristic the benefits from HT and large cache.

BTW, do you have even CPU distribution, or unbalanced?

Don, where did the MAXDOP=8 come from? Are you on SQL 2000 or 2005? When I did parallel execution plan testing just prior to 2005 RTM, I found SQL 2000 scaling beyond the NUMA cell was highly problematic, while SQL 2005 showed excellent scaling to 16 procs, 4 NUMA cells (prior to dual core). Later, 2k5 SP2 made additional improvements.

Linchi: I am suprised HP didn't send their very first DL785 off the assembly line! Anymore takers?

mrdenny: if you are on a 385, then moving to a 585 is the right thing for now. I do not like buying hardware (specifically the processor complex) for more than the immediate needs within 1-2 year, on the expectation that newer faster (throughput anyways) will be available next. For fast growing environments, it is better to buy one system now, replace it in 2 years for a 4-year life, than to buy a system with headroom for the full 4 years. I am inclined to think that AMD will not implement 1-hop capability for more than 8 sockets, or atleast not 16, and the same for Intel on the Xeon side. If we project out 8 cores per socket (and 16 logical in Nehalem) in the 2010 time frame, this makes 64 cores in an 8-way system. What is the MS plan for supporting more than 64-way? Will we have Affinity128 Mask?

sql_noob: I don't consider the 785 a joke, it should be a serious platform for people doing highly intensive work. But as with all expensive things, it get sold to people with big budgets regardless of whether they need it or not. Anyone who writes "that you won't get much performance improvement with that many CPU cores" without qualification is an idiot out of his depth. It is correct to say that one should not assume that the big box will yield improvement on a drop in basis. As I said above and in other places: for any database application, the execution plans for the complete application will consist of many individual component operations. Some component ops have excellent scaling beyond 16-32 cores, some have horrible scaling beyond 2-4 (and sometimes 1). What do you think the chances are that your particular application, designed blind to these considerations, will magically avoid the bad ops? especially considering that many of the poor scaling ops tend be the ones that support really bad SQL coding techniques favored by people who should not be allowed near a database. But I digress, Usually, finding the bad ops is not too difficult, sometimes correcting or bypassing the bad ops is easy, other times difficult. such is life. It is more accurate to say todays apps do not run well on (hard) NUMA systems, instead of 8 cores. I am not sure the original programmer really designed and tested more than 2, its only luck that it seems to do ok. And then what I said about the high mem costs still applies. As to the IO slots, if you have a large DW, 16-32 cpus can consume a lot of data, which does not fit into memory. For this, you might want to feed the engine with with a fire hose, not a garden hose, this means 3-10GB/sec, which big iron systems can do. Too often I have seen people buy big budget systems to the sales rep/SE recommended configuration which ends up doing only 200-300MB/sec. One $quarter-mill DMX did 14MB/sec.

I don't forget, but the Integrity is not advertised as: Great RAS, somewhat slower performance, so its up to Intel to get Itanium up to par with other processors, especially Core2 now, and Nehalem later

thanks Gunter, I was really hoping to get a highly authoritative source on what the newest components can do, so I do not want to spend my money without knowing whether I'll get any improvements. If we can get 1.6GB/s per card, that could kind of change the IO load strategy. Previously, I said spread load across all x4 or x8 PCI-E slots in a balanced manner. Now with 1.6 on the x8 (or x16), maybe the best strategy is to just use the 6 (3 x8 and 3 x16) wide PCI-E slots on the 785, or an asymmetric, more on the wide, less on the x4.

OK, so the MAXDOP 8 is specific to Itanium Dual-Core, which has 8 cores on 1 NUMA node, and this will change with each major architecture generation. Still, my preference for DW would be to limit smaller queries to MAXDOP 2 or 4, but allow all out parallelism on the really big queries, atleast for some people, as SQL 2K5 can scale across NUMA nodes on Itanium/Superdome, but you know best on this.

without knowing the actual app characteristics, then purely from cost considerations, I would advocate 128 or 256GB mem. Figure the base system plus 8 proc will cost $46K, then $3-4K for memory is a drop in the bucket, even 128GB at +$7.6K is kind of low. I would say that 256GB at $26K is a reasonable balance for this system. Of course if you already know your app will not use more than 64-128GB, then thats fine. Please pay attention to system, it has 6 PCI-E slots at x8 or higher, 5 slots are x4. I used to say x4, but Gunter say the P800 controller can drive 1.6GB/s from a x8 slot. If this is a DW/OLAP, then try to balance according the PCI-E slot, perhaps 2 MSA60 per x8 or x16 slot, and 1 MSA per controller on the x4 slots. May be 6 P800s for x8 and x16, plus 4 controllers for the x4 for a total of 16 MSA60. the controllers in the x4 need not be P800, but maybe for interchangeability, just do P800 across the board. I do not see why you would need the P600 for internal, the onboard E/P400 might be fine