14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has officially launched the Xeon E5-2600 series of central processing units, one that promises to improve not just server performance, but also security and latency, not to mention power efficiency.
The things which Intel revealed through its press release and the webcast it held yesterday (March 6, 2012) are definitely worth a glance, even from people who aren't directly involved in the server, data center, supercomputing (HPC) and communications industries.
There are no less than sixteen new models in the Xeon collection, forming the E5-2600 line and priced at $198 / 150.71 Euro to $2,061 / 1,568.85 Euro.
They come in up to eight cores, are meant for dual-socket installations and, as a major asset, deliver performance of up to 80% better compared to their predecessors (Xeon 5600). Only two of them lack Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.
As if that wasn't already impressive enough, the chips can handle up to 768GB of system memory, which means RAM, not storage.
Furthermore, the PCI Express 3.0 interface is supported and, with the I/O itself integrated directly into the CPU instead of acting separately (granting direct access to the CPU cache), the movement of data in and out of the processor is tripled.
Not only that, but data encryption is now done at hardware level, and the Santa Clara company even claims that encryption and decryption can be carried out in real time without any perceivable loss of performance.
We'll cover the more important aspects of the newcomer individually, so stay tuned for details on Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instruction (Intel AES-NI) and Intel Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT15).
“The growth in cloud computing and connected devices is transforming the way businesses benefit from IT products and services,” said Diane Bryant, Intel vice president and general manager of the datacenter and connected systems group.
“For businesses to capitalize on these innovations, the industry must address unprecedented demand for efficient, secure and high-performing datacenter infrastructure. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family is designed to address these challenges by offering unparalleled, balanced performance across compute, storage and network, while reducing operating costs.”
UPDATE (March 7, 2012): As promised, we've posted some details and slides (from the webcast) on the real-time encrypt/decrypt performance, the I/O integration and the data center performance per watt improvements.