From quad core to 6-core processors; The Intel does it all. Now with its latest offer, the Intel Xeon 7400. It has the industry’s highest virtualization performance with built-in key platform innovations and the highest expandability for large-scale server consolidation.

The Xeon 7400, codenamed “Dunnington” is basically three dual-core Penryn processors packed onto a single processor die, along with a large pool of shared L3 cache and interconnect logic. With six cores and three levels of cache on one die, Dunnington is a 1.9-billion-transistor monster. This is almost as big as the company’s latest 2-billion-transistor Itanium chip (launched in February), and it’s quite a milestone for the x86 instruction set. In four- and eight-socket configurations, a supercomputer based on the new Xeon can now execute 48 or 96 simultaneous threads per node, a reality that’s bound to help the architecture advance further in the high performance computing space. And at the very top end, there’s also a 16-socket configuration on offer.

The Xeon 7400 series architecture

Unlike the 65nm, quad-core Tukwila, Dunnington is produced on Intel’s 45nm process. This means that Dunnington uses less power, and indeed, the top-end, 2.66GHz SKU has a 130W TDP (compare Tukwila’s 170W TDP). The 2.4GHz part boasts a 90W TDP, and there’s a 2.13GHz part that runs at a relatively cool 65W. It means that it is the best-in-class for demanding enterprise workloads with almost 50% better performance in some cases and up to 10% reduction in platform power. The Intel Xeon processor 7400 series is the ideal choice for your data-intensive, business-critical performance requirements.