Intel's Six-Core and Quad-Core Xeon 5600 CPUs Debut

The Gulftown may be Intel's first consumer-oriented six-core central processing unit, but this is not the case for the server processor market. Such multi-core processors are rather extensively used in data canters and high performance computers. Aiming to expand its server offering with a new line of better and more secure chips, the Santa Clara-based chip maker has officially revealed that it has completed its Xeon 5600 series of quad-core and six-core processors, also known as Westmere-EP.

The fresh central processing units are created using the 32nm manufacturing process technology, have clock speeds ranging between 1.86Ghz and 3.46GHz, and consume between 40W and 130W. They boast the HyperThreading technology (8/12 threads), an L3 cache memory of 12MB and an integrated DDR3 memory controller.

All in all, the Xeon 5600 series of processors are expected to be 60% more powerful than the 45nm Xeon 5500 processors. However, this processing boost is only half of what makes the new chips appealing, the other half being the heightened security capabilities. The fresh Xeon Series units feature the Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (Intel AES-NI), as well as the Intel Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT), which enable encryption/decryption operations to be carried out more rapidly.

"The Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series will be the backbone of mainstream computing environments," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group. "New security capabilities will boost the confidence of IT managers. Improvements in performance, server virtualization and power consumption will foster productivity and efficiency for a broad range of applications ranging from data transactions to workstations performing medical imaging and digital prototyping."

Among the companies that will release servers based on these new CPUs are Fujitsu, Dell, Cisco, Oracle and IBM. Details on the chip specs and pricing may be found as part of the company's official press release.