SAN FRANCISCO-- Intel Corp. unveiled its latest calculating
engine for corporate computing rooms, a new version of its Xeon
chip that the company said offers up to three times the performance
of prior models.
The company said its new Xeon E5-2600 v3, which comes in 26
models, offers a range of enhancements that are aimed not only for
servers but also to handle network and data-storage jobs.
Intel's Xeon line accounts for the vast majority of servers
shipped today. The company is eager to take on more jobs in data
centers, replacing special-purpose hardware with software
applications running on Xeon chips--a trend sometimes called
"software-defined infrastructure."
Backers of the technology say it can allow corporate customers
to deploy new applications and services more quickly than earlier
approaches.
Diane Bryant, a senior vice president and general manager of
Intel's data center group, told reporters at an event here that the
move to software-defined infrastructure is both "critical and
inevitable."
The new Xeon has up to 18 processor cores, and supports several
new technologies to fetch data from other parts of a system more
quickly than earlier products, Intel said. Using solid-state disk
drives--which rely on flash memory chips--a system using the new
chip can get a sixfold improvement in processing some kinds of
computing jobs, Ms. Bryant said.
Besides standard chips, Ms. Bryant said Intel had delivered 20
models of the new chip in customized versions for specific
unidentified customers. The new Xeon also includes specialized
circuitry for handling jobs such as data encryption, offering up to
a 30-fold speedup in handling a popular technology called SSL that
is used to protect web transactions, Intel said.
Intel said the chips range in price from $213 to $2,702 in
quantities of 1,000 or more.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires