Intel launches new Ivy Bridge Xeons, targets microservers

Intel is pushing out that delicious Ivy Bridge update to server chips and, interestingly, it's not focusing purely on the high end to start. In total, 28 new Xeon CPUs were introduced today, including the E5-4600 and 2400 families targeted at four and two socket systems, respectively. Those tweaked mainstream processors aren't the interesting part, though. We're more intigued by the updated E3 series, the low-end offerings that are aimed small businesses and light web-hosting duty. In particular the new E3-1220L v2 slashes power consumption to an impressive 17w by going with just two cores and only 3MB of cache. While that 3W advantage over its predecessor may not sound like much, it can make a huge difference in the microserver market and in high-density environments where cooling a room full of servers can become problematic. Even in its stripped down form the extremely low-power processor still supports Turbo Boost, Trusted Execution Technology and PCI-Express 3.0. Considering that last-gen's Atom-based server chip pulled down 15W, we'd consider the 1220L v2 an impressive feat of engineering. Now we've just gotta hope that Intel can carry through on that promised 6W Centerton chip. Check out the PR after the break.

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Intel launches new Ivy Bridge Xeons, targets microservers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 01:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.