Intel Desktop and 1P Xeon Sandy Bridge-E CPUs Are Almost Identical

Intel's single-socket Xeon server processors based on the Sandy Bridge-EP architecture will resemble the upcoming LGA 2011 Core i7 chips to the point that one would believe they are actually identical, states a recent report.

According to information uncovered by CPU-World, in the fourth quarter of 2011 Intel will launch three new single-socket processors based on the Sandy Bridge-EP architecture.

These will be released into the E5 product line and will be known as E5-1620, E5-1650, and E5-1660, the 1000-series designation pointing out that they can only be used in 1P server systems.

Despite their new names, the specifications of these processors look surprisingly familiar with those of the desktop Sandy Bridge-E chips.

This includes both core number, operating frequency and L3 cache amount, the only uncertainty being the maximum Turbo Boost clock speed, as this wasn't unearthed yet.

As you can see from the table included in the article, the E5-1660 is Intel's fastest single-socket E5 processor as it packs six computing cores clocked at 3.3GHz, which are paired with 15MB of Level 3 cache memory.

Right bellow this chip comes the Xeon E5-1650, which also includes six-processing cores, but has the L3 cache reduced to 12MB, while the operating clock is now set to 3.2GHz.

The final CPU to be released into the Xeon X5-1000 line is the X5-1620 that packs only four computing cores and 10MB of Level 3 cache, but has its base operating speed increased to 3.6GHz.

Like the rest of Intel's Sandy Bridge-E processor lineup, these three Xeon X5 chips also include a four-channel memory controller, Hyper-Threading, Turbo Boost, Trusted Execution and virtualization support as well as the AVX and AES-NI instruction sets.

In addition, these should also carry ECC support, which could prove to be the only feature to separate them from their desktop versions.