150W TDP in Intel 8-Core Sandy Bridge-EP server processors

[$Iain$]

Intel’s 8-core Xeon E5 processors is mainly designed for to produce high-performance Sandy Bridge-EP architecture and it will have TDP of 150W at 3GHz. This range of processors only for workstation and servers side and I don’t think that the Intel will be going to launch those processors in the desktop space. There is still no rumor about these things.

[HKrish]

The processors have a speed of 3.0 GHz core, 20 MB of Level 3 cache, and each could process up to 16 threads simultaneously, thanks to Intel's HyperThreading technology. Unfortunately, the high number of cores and impressive L3 cache are hurting energy consumption of the CPU, as this has a thermal design power (TDP) of 150W, according to the CPU-Z, which is 20W higher than the TDP of the Core i7 990X.

[Arun K]

If you compare just server processors with desktop CPUs?

Of course, the server models are more energy efficient. Otherwise, the cooling would be so expensive again. But I have heard that these processors do not support CPU-Z officially. So I think that there could be a wrong reading.

[Rawana]

That’s just the question, because the i7 3xxx become essentially only through multiplier overclocking, and chances are substantial that multiplier is locked. But there is also a fair chance that there is a i7 comes out with 8 cores, since the process feathered is developed, and it may well be possible to 8 cores on the same speed as the current CPUs with a 130W TDP to be delivered.

[Upendra]

The new 8-core "Sandy Bridge EP" Xeon E5 processors are primarily designed for the business platform, which can also be seen on the featureset of the matching chipset. This chipset is what the x79 really should have been, so a SAS support, multi-CPU support, more SATA ports and a new generation of Intel RST. The latter makes for TRIM to include multiple SSDs in possible RAID, a feature which is now only on a single SSD can be offered. Apart from the 8 processing cores and 20MB L3 cache memory, Sandy Bridge-EP also includes up to 2 QPI connections, PCIe Gen3 40 channels, 4 DMI 2.0 channels and DDR3 memory controller that supports quad channel up to three DIMMs per channel for up to 96 GB.

[raghini]

The E5 Xeon processor line will consist of three series of CPUs, called E5 1600, E5-2600 and E5-4600 and all offer a similar set of features, although the latter are compatible with dual-socket motherboards and four sockets. But here I think that 150W is too much. The AMD Opteron server with 12x2, 2 GHz has a TDP of 115W. That's ok, but 150W is in my opinion far from the target shooting.

AMD is generally more economical, which can be easily determined even by the power loss.

[Pamina]

The operating voltage of the processor is 1.181V, and consumption is TDP 150W, the highest figure seen in a x86 microprocessor, but does not sound bad considering they are 8 cores and AMD QuadCore and Intel itself has come to 140W and 137W TDPs. Although it is noteworthy that AMD and Intel TDP are not comparable. It is presumed that this relatively high consumption has been one of the reasons why Intel has decided not to launch a Sandy Bridge-EP processor with 8 cores for the desktop market.

[Skullnit]

I think that due to TDP reason, the Intel does not released it as a desktop processor is its energy consumption. They have analyzed this with AMD Bulldozer, energy consumption exceeds 150W. If Intel wanted, they could make this processor in its line of desktop processors and will lead to the bulldozer.