Pivoting slightly from our focus on high-end, and high-power server CPUs, we have the Intel Atom C3958 performance benchmarks under Linux. We have already published benchmarks on the Intel Atom C3338, C3558 and C3955 which are instructive for other points of reference within the Intel Atom C3000 series. While the Intel Atom C3958 does not have the clock speeds to match the Intel Atom C3955 series, it still has 16 cores. What it can claim is that it is the highest-bin QuickAssist part in the current Intel Atom C3000 series lineup.

In 2016 we published a few articles around using QuickAssist with OpenSSL and for聽40GbE VPN acceleration. In the meantime, Intel has now launched a 100Gbps QAT version and has built QAT into the聽Burgeoning Intel Xeon SP Lewisburg PCH Options.聽We will have some cool QAT results soon. For now a few notes:

QuickAssist Technology acceleration still requires some effort as Intel is not adding it into every chip. Until Intel does so, we expect most software to require an additional step (or much more) getting QAT working.

We do have QAT working on the Intel Atom C3958 already and it is enumerated as a different device type than other QAT solutions as can be seen in the screenshot.

The iQAT can be disabled if that is desired. We wish Intel added this to every chip so it became automatic in applications as that would help QAT support considerably.

At the same time, there are only three reasons you would get a C3958 over a C3955: QAT support, extended lifecycle, and if a specific platform you wanted to use did not have a C3955 option. That makes the QAT support a significant piece of the puzzle.

Key stats for the Intel Atom C3958 series: 16 cores / 16 threads, 2.0GHz. Unlike the C3955, the C3958 does not feature turbo boost so 2.0GHz is also the maximum speed. The CPU features 31W TDP. This CPU also features a full 20x high-speed I/O lanes and has 4x10GbE making it top-bin in terms of features for QuickAssist parts. These chips are not socketed so end customer pricing will include a motherboard at a minimum. The CPU alone has a 1K unit tray price of $449. Virtualization features such as VT-d and SR-IOV are supported on this generation. Here is the ARK page for the CPU.

Also, for our readers who want to see feature flags, here is the Linux聽lscpu output:

Our test configuration is very similar to what we used for our Intel Atom C2000 series reviews.

We are using the Gigabyte MA10-ST0 for our test platform. This is an absolutely stunning storage server solution with 16x SATA ports and onboard 10Gb SFP+ networking.

The board comes with an onboard 32GB eMMC storage from Kingston. For an embedded system this is an awesome feature. On this platform we expect this eMMC to be used as a boot device rather than a more expensive SATA DOM. The four SFF-8087 ports mean that using a SATA DOM is not easy on the platform in either case, but they provide easy connectivity to storage backplanes.

We will have a full review of the Gigabyte MA10-ST0 soon, but for those wondering, the maximum power consumption with 2x 10Gb SFP+ links (SR optics) and 2x 1GbE links we have seen is around 61W. We will publish formal figures with our platform reviews but this is certainly a solid low-power platform for the performance and connectivity you are getting.