The Quad-Core Xeon Jumps Over The 3GHz Mark

The Xeon processor family is Intel's attempt to capitalize on its massive success on the desktop and mobile markets. The Xeons are designed to be server chips, not intended for the individual customers, but for large corporations and equally big and important servers.

Built on the 45 nm architecture, this new family of server chips is sometimes called the "Penryn architecture". They represent the first ever quad-cores x86 compatible chips from Intel that breach the 3GHz barrier, while improving the energy efficiency for the cores themselves. Already named "Harperown", this generation will include a top end Xeon X5640 with a peak frequency of 3.16GHz, a 2.83GHz E5440 and 2.5GHz E5420 as middle level chips an even a low cost, low power solution that will run at 2.33GHz and consume only 50W of power on average.

As another improvement over today's processors, all the "Harpertown" chips will have an additional 4MB of level 2 cache, reaching an impressive 12 MB of cache. This new amount of cache memory will help reduce the likehood of bus or memory bottlenecks. A more simple architecture, using only two core will also be soon available. The quad-core chips will have the official designation "Wolfdale" and will be by all accounts cheaper versions of the "Harpertown" chips. The upgrade trend from Intel reached here too, as they will use 6MB of level two cache memory (from only 4MB at the moment).

"Wolfdale", being simpler designs, will support an increased clock speed over the "Harpertown" processors: the E5250 will run at 3.33GHz, while the L5250 will top at about 3.16GHz. While the clock differences are not huge, they still exist and are translated into an increase of power consumption, as the E5250 will need 65W and the smaller L5250 will make do with 40W. According to an Intel engineer cited by macnn.com the number of dual-core processors that will produced will be smaller than the number of quad-cores.