Remember Intel’s six-core server chip baby that was to be up for display soon? Bang! Here it is. Intel monday unveiled the new Xeon 7400 Series server processors in SAn Francisco, including the chip giant’s first six-core chip, promising that the devices are better suited for virtualisation than Xeon 7300 products already on the market. They are also slated to provide performance increases of about 50 per cent, which is great news.
Although we are more interested in learning about the six-core processor, Intel seemed to be focussing more on the virtualisation aspects of it, during the announcement. “With new features such as additional cores, large shared caches and advanced virtualization technologies, the Xeon 7400 series delivers record-breaking performance that will lead enterprises into the next wave of virtualization deployments,” said Kilroy, VP and GM of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.
The cool aspects are that the Xeon series chips are going to have 16MB of shared L3 cache, come in both quad-core and six-core flavors, feature 45nm process technology, include a low-voltage 50W version for blade configurations, and feature Intel’s VT FlexMigration technology, which eases backwards and forwards VM migration across previous Core-based hardware platforms through to the upcoming Nehalem-based MP server products.
The fastest chip in the 45nm Xeon 7400 Series is a quad-core 2.66GHz version, listed at the same $2,729 price as the six-core product.
