Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series

'This week Intel releases its new Xeon processor codenamed Nehalem'.

The new Intel microarchitecture will enter a marketplace in which vendors of x86 servers are witnessing rising adoption of server virtualisation.

As the global financial crisis spurs workload consolidation,workload densities are increasing per physical server, management software tools are being updated to better control both physical and virtual servers, and efforts to produce energy-efficient servers are increasing.

All of these technology trends are collectively aimed at improving resource utilisation on x86 servers, while reducing ongoing operational costs within the datacentre.

As the global financial crisis hits Australia the need for cost effective computing solutions is becoming more critical.

Built on 45nm wafer process technology, Nehalem based servers will allow customers to do more with less; lowering their operating expenses and producing higher return on investment.

Nehalem introduces significant changes to Intel's main line x86-64 microprocessor and will be the fastest x86 CPU produced.

Corey Loehr, group manager A/NZ Enterprise and Solution Sales for Intel said the series offers 70 percent more performance, 40 percent lower system cost and 50 percent fewer cores.

"This is the most significant server performance launch in Intel's history since the Pentium Pro processor in 1995.

"In 2015, architecture will be very different to what it is today. Customers are trying to reduce costs and complexity in looking to standardise their architecture.

Nehalem, aka Intel Xeon 5500 processor series, is one of the sweetest processors I have ever used. Each chip has 4 cores, each core composed of two threads. On a build machine with two of such chips running at 2.53GHz and a mere 12GB of memory, it is able to do a full build of the Solaris OS/Net gate in 48 minutes, a record that leads the runner-up by 25 minutes. It's not everyday that you get to improve your engineers productivity by 34% simply by replacing their build machine.

Intel has also unveiled the L5518 and L5508 versions of Intel Xeon processors.

The L5518 offers 2.13 GHz and a power level of 60 watts. The L5508 offers 2.00 GHz and a power level of 38 watts.

Loehr said there are three pillars of a data centre; Compute; which carries the Intel Xeon 5500 platform with enhanced compute and I/O virtualisation.

The Network; 10Gb Ethernet controller and support for Unified fabric and Storage, Open platform and Performance Breakthroughs (SSDS).