Intel launches Xeon E5-2600 series for enterprise segment

Intel have just announced their brand new E5-2600 series of Xeon processors for the enterprise segment. The new series finally brings some Sandy Bridge sophistication to workstations and companies, like Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc, IBM, Oracle Corp and Cisco Systems Inc are already jumping onboard. The new chips will be available for single, dual and quad-socket configurations. The new chips are based on the same Sandy Bridge-E silicon, which is capable of supporting up to 8-cores. The desktop version of these chips top out at 6-cores, but for the server segment, Intel need not hold back here and they can unleash the true power of the Sandy Bridge-E core.

Enterprise segment refresh

The new chips will support up to 20MB of L3 cache and will carry forward the same quad-channel memory. The highest end chip will feature a high TDP of 150W, while the lowest end sits at around 60W. Here are some of the main highlights of the new E5-2600 CPUs:

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• Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel AVX): These instructions increase  floating point operations per clock up to two times for technical, financial, scientific and content creation applications. 
• Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0: This technology allows the processor to increase  frequency at the request of the operating system (OS) to handle workload spikes as well as shift power across the processor. With the Xeon processor E5-2600 product family, this technology enables even higher turbo speeds. The top Xeon processor 5690 with one active core could turbo up to 266 MHz, while the E5-2690 can increase frequency up to 900 MHz.  
• Intel Node Manager: This server power management technology runs dynamic,  policy-based management algorithms to improve data center energy efficiency. Intel Node Manager provides a streamlined server instrumentation solution, taking advantage  of lower level data and controls available in the processor, OS, Baseboard Management  Controller (BMC), and other subsystems to manage system power and enable capabilities, such as load migration. The policy can be updated while an OS is running, enabling real-time updates without affecting server availability. 
• Intel Data Center Manager (Intel DCM): This power management solution stack builds on the Intel Node Manager and a customer’s existing management console to aggregate node data across the entire rack or data centre to track metrics, historical data and provide alerts to IT managers. This allows IT managers to establish group level power policies to limit consumption, while dynamically adapting to changing server loads. Data centers can increase rack density, manage power peaks and adjust the power and cooling infrastructure based on the data from the DCM. Intel Data Center Manager, enabled through partnerships with third party management consoles allows for even more automated control via IT policies.