There are 32 of them in total, with prices of $295 to $2,702 / €229 - €2,098

Sep 9, 2014 06:50 GMT  ·  By

You may or may not have been left awe-struck by the capabilities of the Intel Core i7-5000X Extreme Edition central processing units, but they are nothing compared to the new Xeon line, or at least some of them.

Intel has formally launched the Xeon E5-2600 v3 and Xeon E5-1600 v3 central processing units, the best of which are superior to even the Core i7-5960X, the flagship enthusiast consumer processor.

Understandable, since the Xeon line is made for high-end servers and workstations, some of which run workloads so demanding that they need more than one CPU, no matter how good. It's why dual-socket motherboards were invented.

There are 26 Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors in the new collection, as well as 6 E5-1600 v3 processors.

The Xeon E5-2600 v3 CPU series

Based on the Haswell-EP architecture, these chips have up to 18 cores per socket, a maximum of 45 MB L3 cache memory, and an extension to Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel AVX2), which “doubles the width of vector integer instructions to 256 bits per clock cycle for integer sensitive workloads.”

In layman terms, this enabled a 1.9x performance gain in certain mathematical calculations. Between that, the 50% higher number of cores, and the same cache advantage over the previous generation, the Xeon E5-2600 v3 CPUs have three times the performance of the Ivy Bridge-EP.

Add to that a better energy efficiency and security, and you have a winning formula all around.

Servers, workstations, storage, and networking infrastructures are where you can expect to find these processors in the future, running HPS workloads (high-performance computers, or supercomputers), data analytics, cloud-based services, and telecommunications.

Back-end processing for the Internet of Things is also part of the overall plan. After all, if you're going to connect everything run by electricity to the cloud, someone (or rather something) will need to run it all.

Xeon E5-2500 v3 CPUs can be paired with the Intel Communications Chipset 89xx series, providing Intel Quick Assist Technology (fast encryption and compression) and flexible 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet, among other things. Up to 24 DDR4 DIMMs can be supported on a single mainboard.

The Xeon E5-1600 v3 CPU series

As you might expect, they are the lower-end ones, though they still play roughshod with any consumer processor, for the most part. There are six of them, two quad-cores, one six-core, and two eight-core. They don't really hold a candle to the six-core to 18-core models in the E5-2600 v3 line, but they will enable some pretty powerful workstations regardless.

Other than that, the feature set is mostly the same. Below you have the full performance and spec table for the new Haswell-EP generation of professional CPUs from Intel.

Many manufacturers have already started to incorporate Haswell-EP CPUs into their operations: IBM, Huawei, Lenovo, NEC, SGI, Sugon, and Supermicro, Oracle, Quanta, Radisys, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Bull, and Cray.

Prices range from $213 / €165 to $2,702 / €2,098 for the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 product family and $295 / €229 to $1,723 / €1,338 for the E5-1600 series. The tags are calculated for order quantities of 1,000 chips.

Intel launches Xeon E5 line of Haswell-EP CPUs
Intel launches Xeon E5 line of Haswell-EP CPUs

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Intel Haswell-EP Xeon CPU line (8 Images)

Intel launches Xeon E5 line of Haswell-EP CPUs
Intel launches Xeon E5 line of Haswell-EP CPUsIntel launches Xeon E5 line of Haswell-EP CPUs
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