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Karl Glennon
Asked: 2013-07-03 09:44:25 +0800 CST

2 x Dual Core vs 1 x Quad Core Performance

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A license restriction limits us to 2 x dual core servers, or one 1 x quad core server.

  • Should we see better performance running 2 x Dual Core servers or 1 x Quad Core?

  • Dual Core processors are harder to find now. Which would give best performance?

EDIT Thanks for the responses. The application runs Tomcat Java and performs XSL/XML transformations. Would there be core to core communications on a Tomcat, or is each request handled in a single thread/core? The servers we have at the moment are both Dual Core Xeon E3113 3GHz

EDIT The application handles a considerable amount of XML throughput which is a memory, CPU, and network intensive task. Under the hood it uses a combination of DOM, XPath and Xerces.

java

3 Answers

  1. If there are any core-to-core communications then you'll find that generally a quad-core will be faster, sometimes significantly so, than two dual-cores. The reason is that the bandwidth and/or latency between cores on the same die can often be very much faster than any external connections. That said you don't mention specific processors so you could be comparing a new fast dual-core CPU to a very old quad core but I imagine that's not the case.

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  2. Ah, whatever you do, consider age.

    These days dual core are harder to find as they are older. That means slower, per core.

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  3. @ewwhite it's a propriety application with very limited distribution.

    Well, in situations like this, where you have an application with an archaic licensing scheme, you're going to be limited in your options as hardware progresses. Dual-core CPUs are all but obsolete in the modern processor offerings from the major manufacturers. Quad-core CPUs are also less available as 6-core and 8-core dual-socket servers advance.

    The way I usually approach this type of restriction is through virtualization. VMware, for instance, provides a nice option to specify the core/socket count for software licensing purposes.

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    Another option is to limit the number of cores available to the operating system at the BIOS level. High-end servers allow you to disable CPU cores on modern processors. That may get you to where you want to be and still provide you the benefit of faster CPUs and compatibility with newer servers.

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