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The lineup

Here's the Nehalem EP lineup, with their basic feeds and speeds (name, clock speed, core count, cache, wattage, bandwidth, and price each for 1,000-unit trays).

For two-socket servers and workstations:

  • W5580: 3.2 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 130 watts, 6.4 GT/sec; $1,600
  • X5570: 2.93 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 95 watts, 6.4 GT/sec; $1,386
  • X5560: 2.8 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 95 watts, 6.4 GT/sec; $1,172
  • X5550: 2.66 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 95 watts, 6.4 GT/sec; $958
  • E5540: 2.53 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 80 watts, 5.86 GT/sec; $744
  • E5530: 2.4 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 80 watts, 5.86 GT/sec; $530
  • E5520: 2.26 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 80 watts, 5.86 GT/sec; $373
  • E5506: 2.13 GHz, quad-core, 4 MB L2 cache, 80 watts, 4.8 GT/sec; $266
  • E5504: 2 GHz, quad-core, 4 MB L2 cache, 80 watts, 4.8 GT/sec; $224
  • E5502: 1.86 GHz, dual-core, 4 MB L2 cache, 80 watts, 4.8 GT/sec; $188
  • L5520: 2.26 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 60 watts, 5.86 GT/sec; $530
  • L5506: 2.13 GHz, quad-core, 4 MB L2 cache, 60 watts, 4.8 GT/sec; $423

For uniprocessor servers and workstations:

  • W3570: 3.2 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 130 watts, 6.4 GT/sec; $999
  • W3540: 2.93 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 130 watts, 4.8 GT/sec; $562
  • W3520: 2.66 GHz, quad-core, 8 MB L2 cache, 130 watts, 4.8 GT/sec; $284

And for embedded servers - core count, cache and bandwidth not yet known - which have a seven-year lifecycle as required by makers of embedded systems:

  • L5518: 2.13 GHz, 60 watts; $530
  • L5508: 2 GHz, 38 watts; $423

The Nehalem EP processor has just over 730 million transistors and is manufactured on a 45 nanometer Hi-K process. The Penryn microarchitecture that debuted in earlier Xeon processors has been tweaked, according to Gelsinger, including deeper out-of-order execution, branch prediction, and a slew of enhancements to make server virtualization have less overhead than it currently does.

But the virtualization software has to be tweaked to take full advantage of these new VT-d and related features, he cautioned. With the new virtualization features coupled with VMware's future vSphere virtualization hypervisor, four server makers (Cisco, IBM, Dell, and Inspire) have demonstrated about a 160 per cent improvement in performance on the VMark virtualization benchmark from VMware compared to prior "Harpertown" Xeon 5400 servers.

"Our goal is to get native performance on virtual machines," explained Gelsinger, but he conceded that Intel may not be able to get the overhead all the way down to zero.

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Next page: (Semi-)Turbo Boost

Latest Comments

Itanic is dead except for ostrich HP-UX customers

Nehalem is the real reason Tukwila will be 12 months late. Tukwila will not be out until November, conveniently after HP's fiscal year end..

Nehalem is 4.1X for fp_rate_2006, 5.5X for Specjbb_2005, 4.7X Spec_int_rate_2006, and 4.7X for SAP-SD over Itanium

What idiot would buy Itanium unless they want to pay for 5X the processors and 100X the cost..

cheers!

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Re: The End of Itanium

At this point in time, Itanic is only marginally more relevant than Motorola's 68K series. Actually, scrub that, I bet there are more of the latter still doing useful work out there.

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Anonymous Coward

The End of Itanium

Itanic is the biggest loser in this announcement.

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