Originally planned for release early next year, Intel Corp. bumped up the release of its first dual-core, hyper-threaded processors for servers with four or more processors, the company reported today.
The processors, which began shipping today, deliver what the company says are record levels of performance and are aimed at multi-threaded applications such as software for databases, supply chain management and financial services.
The Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 7000, formerly codenamed “Paxville,” is shipping today with speeds up to 3GHz and a 667MHz dual independent system bus. The new processors fit into Intel’s existing platforms using the E8500 dual-core chipset that shipped earlier this year.
Early next year, Intel said it would ship new versions of the chipset and processor to support an 800MHz dual independent system bus.
The platform shipping today includes DDR2 memory, PCI Express, advanced reliability features, and hardware-enabled support for Intel Virtualization Technology, designed to provide hardware support within the processor for virtualized server applications to make them more reliable, robust and efficient. Intel said it is also working with the industry to turn on this capability via a BIOS switch early next year.
“Intel-based servers with dual-core technology will further increase the IT efficiency and system utilization for VMWare customers,” said Brian Byun, VP of technical alliances for VMware, in a statement.
“Virtualization is the killer application to harness the increased power of multi-core processors across a broad range of enterprise workloads,” he explained.
VMware said it would deliver enhanced product capabilities through the hardware virtualization support enabled in Intel’s latest dual-core Intel Xeon processors.
Servers based on the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 7000 sequence are expected to be available from system manufacturers worldwide beginning today.
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Looking ahead, Intel plans to deliver “Tulsa,” a 65nm dual-core Intel Xeon processor MP with a larger 16MByte shared L3 cache for servers with four or more processors, in the second half of next year that will fit into the same systems as the dual-core Intel Xeon processor 7000 sequence announced today. Tulsa is set to begin shipping to customers for evaluation by the end of the year, Intel said.
Last month, Intel added a new processor family for 2007 to the Xeon roadmap, codenamed “Caneland,” planned to include a quad-core processor, codenamed “Tigerton,” based on Intel’s next generation micro-architecture. The Caneland platform is designed to deliver higher performance through a high-speed interconnect, an interface connecting each processor directly to the chipset, Intel said.
In addition, the Caneland platform is expected to implement an upcoming memory technology, called fully-buffered dual in-line memory module and will include four memory interconnects that take advantage of the increased capabilities of the technology, Intel concluded.
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