HP ProLiant BL660c AMD Opteron™ and Intel® Xeon® x - Page 14

Intel TXT requires:  Xeon 5600 series processor and Intel TXT-enabled chipset  Intel Virtualization Technology  Authenticated Code Module  Launch Control Policy tools  Intel TXT-enabled BIOS  Intel TXT-enabled hypervisor or OS  Trusted Platform Module (TPM) v1.2 ProLiant servers with Xeon 5600 series processors can use Intel TXT. We offer the technology as an option for select ProLiant servers that you may already own. We also offer the TPM microcontroller for select ProLiant servers that support Intel TXT. The TPM securely stores encryption keys, passwords, and digital certificates for platform authentication. It stores platform measurements that help keep the platform trustworthy. AMD security technology AMD Opteron processors contain a security instruction known as Security Kernel Initialization (SKINIT). It works with TPM to establish a secure environment for trusted software such as a hypervisor. SKINIT helps to create a root of trust. It starts with an unsecure operating mode and reinitializes the processor to set up a secure environment for a software component called the secure loader. SKINIT executes the secure loader in an unalterable way. SKINIT also copies the secure loader image to the TPM for verification using unique bus transactions. The transactions prevent malicious software from imitating the SKINIT operation in ways that TPM could not detect. Performance It's difficult to compare the performance of AMD Opteron and Xeon architectures because there are no absolutes about which processor will perform better in a given system. System performance includes more than just the processor. That's one reason we design ProLiant and BladeSystem servers with a balanced architecture that maximizes system performance. A balanced architecture requires superior engineering of the processor, memory, I/O, storage, and networking subsystems. We regularly conduct the following benchmark tests to gauge the performance of our ProLiant and BladeSystem platforms:  SPECpower_ssj™ 2008 compares the energy efficiency of servers and determines the amount of power that servers require at different usage levels.  SPEC CPU2006 focuses mainly on compute-intensive environments in mathematics and the sciences and less on business workloads.  TPC-C simulates an Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database environment.  VMmark measures the performance of virtualized servers.  SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark tests the hardware and database performance of SAP applications and components.  TPC-H simulates a Decision Support System or Business Intelligence database environment. In general, our latest benchmark tests show the AMD Opteron-based 4P ProLiant DL585 G7 server as the top-ranked choice for virtualization/consolidation environments and corporate data center infrastructures. The Xeon-based 4P ProLiant DL580 G7 server scored highest on the two-tier SAP SD 14