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Technical white paper | HP Z640 Workstation
System architecture
The HP Z640 is the successor to the HP Z620 personal workstation. Its
architecture introduces several new functionalities and technologies. These
include DDR4 memory architecture, Intel®-integrated USB 3.0, I/O slot
improvements and better performance.
New technologies
New Intel® Processor micro-architecture
The HP Z640 Workstation uses the Intel® C612 chipset to support the latest up to eighteen-core Intel® Xeon® E5-1600
and E5-2600 processor series (Haswell, 22 nm), including processors of up to 145 W. Intel® Haswell processors feature
a new micro-architecture and a new instruction set including AVX2 (Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0) and FMA (Floating-
point fused Multiply Add instructions) that help deliver faster compute performance, with low energy consumption. The
integrated 4-channel DDR4 memory controller and dual QPI processor interconnect at up to 9.6 GT/s and increase peak
data transfer and bandwidth over the HP Z620.
Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 (Intel® AVX2)
The new Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 (Intel® AVX2) extends the Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX)
with 256-bit integer instructions, floating-point fused multiply add (FMA) instructions, and gather operations. The 256-
bit integer vectors benefit math, codec, image, and digital signal processing software. FMA can improve performance
in face detection, professional imaging, and high-performance computing. Gather operations increase vectorization
opportunities for many applications. In addition to the vector extensions, this generation of Intel® processors adds new
bit manipulation instructions useful in compression, encryption, and general purpose software.
Intel® Data Protection Technology with AES-NI (Intel® AES-NI)
The Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (Intel® AES-NI) are a set of Single Instruction Multiple Data
(SIMD) instructions that enable fast and secure data encryption and decryption based on the Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES). Intel® AES-NI is valuable for a wide range of cryptographic applications, such as applications that perform
bulk encryption/decryption, authentication, random number generation, and authenticated encryption. AES is broadly
accepted as the standard for both government and industry applications, and is widely deployed in various protocols.
Next generation Intel® Active Management Technology
New features for Intel® AMT 9.1 include:
• The Intel® AMT network can now be enabled and disabled.
• Any configuration software can now synchronize the Intel® AMT network time to coordinate with UTC.
• The ability to configure a headless platform remotely without the need for local user-consent has been added.
• Graceful shutdown support
– Earlier versions only supported hard power operations, which can cause unpredictable system behavior. AMT 9.1
adds support for graceful power operations that include Shutdown/Reset/Sleep-deep/Hibernate to improve system
stability.
Memory technology
The HP Z640 Workstation introduces support for DDR4 2133 MHz Registered DIMMs. The speed that the memory runs
is determined by the processors and is limited to 2133 MHz for the Haswell processor generation. DDR4 LR DIMMs
(load-reduced DIMMS) are also supported and enable a total system memory size up to 256 GB.
2
* Channel interleaving
is supported and dynamic power saving is enabled. NUMA and Non-NUMA modes are supported when the second
processor is present.
* May not be available at launch
