Intel previews Intel Xeon ‘Nehalem-EX’ processor

Intel Corporation has shown a preview of a new Intel Xeon processor codenamed “Nehalem-EX.” The processor will be at the heart of the next generation of intelligent and expandable high-end Intel server platforms, which will deliver a number of new technical advancements and boost enterprise computing performance.

In production later this year, the Nehalem-EX processor will feature up to eight cores inside a single chip supporting 16 threads and 24Mb of cache.

The company says its performance increase will be dramatic, posting the highest-ever jump from a previous generation processor.

Nehalem-EX will add new reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features traditionally found in the company’s Intel Itanium processor family, such as Machine Check Architecture (MCA) Recovery. Together with new levels of performance, both high-end processors should speed the move away from more expensive, proprietary RISC-processor based systems.

Ideal for server consolidation, virtualized applications, data demanding enterprise applications and technical computing environments, Nehalem-EX will offer up to nine times the memory bandwidth of the previous-generation Intel Xeon 7400 platform . Nehalem-EX will also double the memory capacity with up to 16 memory slots per processor socket, and offer four highbandwidth QuickPath Interconnect links.

Nehalem-EX will provide higher scalability, from large-memory two-socket systems through eight-socket systems capable of processing 128 threads simultaneously without the need for third-party chips to “glue” the platform together. Additional scalability options including greater sockets counts will be possible with third-party solutions.