I am going to start work on power and thermal management in Multicore processors. I learned that Intel SandyBridge processors have some power and temperature measurement capabilitites accessible through MSRs. I want to buy a either a Server/Desktop system with latest power/temp monitoring capabilities. Any ideas/suggestions.
Hello aajizattari,
Any SandyBridge processor based system will let you monitor the power & temperature of the processor.
Just to be clear, the idle power (the power usage when the cpu is in its lower power state... so basically everything but the processor) can't be monitored using MSRs.
I would recommend that you go through whatever is your standard procedure for picking a system.
There are various websites with 'how do I pick a PC'asking questions like:
what type of work will you use the system for (biz-type work, web server, gaming, etc),
how much work do you need the system to do (impacts number of coresand/or sockets)
how much memory (and memory slots) will you need (impacts number of DIMM slots),
how much memory bandwidth do you need (HPC apps need more BW generally),
do you need to be able to have lots of disks or network cards (determines how many expansion slots)
etc,
I'm pretty sure Intel doesn't recommend specific systems.
I would recommend going to PC (or MAC) vendor websites and going through their "help me choose which system is right for me" webpages and just make sure the processor is a Sandybridge based processor.
Hope this helps,
Pat