Intel to Discontinue Nehalem-Based Xeon 5500 CPUs

Now that the company has introduced its brand new Xeon E5 processors based on the Sandy Bridge-EP architecture, Intel has announced that it will soon discontinue the previous Xeon 5500 CPU series based on the older Nehalem-EP core.

Intel announced its plans through a Product Change Notification (PCN) document that was released shortly before the official launch of the Xeon E5 CPU series.

This decision affects no less than 16 processors, including five chips from the high-performance W- and X-series, 8 mainstream E-series models, as well as three low-power Xeon 5500 CPUs.

The last order date for the processors affected is September 28, 2012, while shipments will continue until March 27, 2015. The boxed versions of these chips will be shipped as long as supplies last.

The only exceptions to this rule are the embedded versions of the Xeon E5540 and E5504 SKUs, which will be available for ordering even after September 28, 2012, as Intel has yet to release any replacements for these chips.

The Tylersburg platform, which the Xeon 5500 series processors are part of, was released by Intel more than 3 years ago.

In the meantime, Nehalem-based Xeon 5500 microprocessors were superseded by Xeon 5600 CPUs, which utilized the newer Westmere-EP architecture, but this hasn’t stopped Intel from manufacturing these chips.

With the launch of the Roomly platform, however, their era is now finally over since Intel’s server clients have a variety of other chips to replace them with.

This includes the company’s new dual-socket six- and eight-core Xeon E5-2600 SKUs, the single-socket E5-1600 models and a series of other CPUs, which should be able to deliver similar performance while requiring less power in order to operate.