- Joined
- Feb 15, 2014
- Messages
- 20,194
Xeon E5 memory support hasn't changed much. 512GB of RAM is easily doable with a single Xeon E5-2xxx and 8 64GB LRDIMMs. If you find a board that takes 12 DIMMs, you can even do 768GB. That means 1TB is easy on a dual-CPU system, 1.5TB are also realistic. Crazy expensive, but realistic.Ugh why has there been such a pinch in the RAM department on each successive CPU iteration as of late?
When Sandy Bridge (1st gen E5) came out, building servers with 256 or 512GB and even up to a TB in a dual cpu system was both possible and affordable all things considered.
I don't even think you can do 512GB on a dual CPU system today. Maybe hardware vendors are afraid of the VM consolidation ratios possible with today's CPUs and reluctant to build high-memory/low-socket-count machines and so intel is relucant to support features on chip that will not be used...
On the low end, Xeon-D has a big advantage over Xeon E3 - RDIMM support. With two channels (two DIMMs per channel max), that means a maximum of 128GB of RAM.