Intel is continuing its assault on Unix servers and mainframes with the release of its latest high-end Xeon processors, including chips that offer up to 10 cores.
The latest missive came April 5, when Intel officials unveiled the Xeon E7 "Westmere EX" portfolio of chips, which they said offer 40 percent more performance than the year-old Xeon 7500 "Nehalem EX" processors and add more RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) features that are more commonly found in high-end Unix and mainframe systems.
The new Xeon E7 chips will pair with Intel's Itanium platform to give enterprises two strong alternatives to RISC-based servers and mainframes offered by the likes of IBM and Oracle, which now owns Sun Microsystems' SPARC/Solaris hardware business, according to Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group.
"Given the economic downturn, the Unix marketplace is in … accelerated decline," Skaugen said during a press conference announcing the new chips. The new Xeon E7 processors will only speed up that decline, he added.
The 32-nanometer Westmere EX chips—18 in all were introduced April 5—are the latest expansion of Intel's "Sandy Bridge" microarchitecture, which first was introduced in PC chips at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in January. Intel also is moving Sandy Bridge up the server chip stack, into its E3 lineup for smaller servers, E5 for midrange system and now E7 for high-end machines that target such mission-critical workloads as databases and back-office applications—typically the kinds of workloads found on RISC/Unix servers.
The E7 chips hit a number of notes that enterprises will appreciate, Skaugen said. Along with the performance jumps, the Xeons will offer consolidation and power-efficiency capabilities, such as the ability to turn off idle processor cores and support for low-voltage memory. Dual-core Xeon E7 chips will offer 18 times the performance of their Nehalem EX counterparts within the same power envelope, he said; single-core Xeon E7s, 29 times the performance.
A server powered by a Westmere EX dual-core processor will be able to replace 18 dual-core systems, which would represent a significant savings in power and space costs, he said.
For more, read the eWEEK article: Intel Unveils High-End Xeon E7 Chips, Targets Unix Market.
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