Intel Xeon 7500 processor series

Intel has launched the Xeon 7500 processor series, with Nehalem chip, that includes 2010 PC, laptop and server processors that increase energy efficiency and computing speed.

Expandable to include from two to 256 chips per server, the processors have an average performance three times that of the existing 7400 series on common, leading enterprise benchmarks.

Scalable performance and reliability enable IT managers to consolidate up to 20 older single-core, 4-chip servers onto a single server while maintaining the same level of performance and can achieve up to a claimed 92% reduction in energy costs.

The processor has machine check architecture recovery that allows the silicon to work with the operating system and virtual machine manager to recover from otherwise fatal system errors.

The series gives scalability through modular building blocks enabled by QuickPath Technology interconnect, which enables cost-effective and scalable eight-processor servers that don’t require specialised third-party node controller chips to ‘glue’ the system together to be built.

The series allows virtualising of large mission-critical workloads for applications such as enterprise resource planning. With up to eight times the memory bandwidth of the 7400 series and four times the memory capacity with 16 memory slots per processor, the 7500 series can support one terabyte of memory in a four-socket platform. Company virtualisation technologies, which include I/O virtualisation capabilities and FlexMigration, enable live VM migration across all Intel Core microarchitecture-based platforms.

Two-chip expandable class platforms with large memory capacity based on the series are suitable for memory-intensive databases and virtualisation environments. The series is available in quad-, six- and eight-core versions with twice the number of threads due to hyper-threading technology.

The series supports up to eight integrated cores and 16 threads, and can scale up to 32 cores and 64 threads per 4-chip platform or 64 cores and 128 threads per 8-chip platform and is available with frequencies up to 2.66 GHz, and 24 MB of smart cache memory, four QPI links and turbo boost technology. Thermal design point power levels range from 95 to 130 W.

The X7560, with eight cores and 24 MB cache size, is built for highly parallel, data demanding and mission-critical workloads, whereas the X7542 is a frequency-optimised 6-core option at 2.66 GHz, targeted for super-node high-performance computing applications in science and financial services.