Intel introduces Xeon 7500 and 6500 series

One day after AMD's launch of Opteron 6100 series of 8 and 12-core microprocessors, Intel responds by revealing their latest top lines of Xeon 4, 6 and 8-core CPUs - 6500 series for two-way servers, and 7500-series for 4 and 8-way servers. Processors, announced today, are built on Nehalem micro-architecture, and include a number of improvements that increase system performance and reliability, such as:

• Increased number of cores - up to 8 cores;
• Huge level 3 cache - up to 24 MB;
• 4 Quick Path Interconnect links used for communication with other processors in the system, or other I/O devices.
• Quad-channel DDR3 memory controller;
• Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) feature with Machine Check Architecture recovery, that allows better system recovery from fatal errors;

Almost all 6500 and 7500 Xeons include HyperThreading feature, which doubles the number of threads, that can be simultaneously processed by each core. Another feature in most new Xeons, Turbo Boost Technology, bumps core frequency in situations when higher performance is needed, if the CPU operates within its thermal design power limits.

Brief information about new Xeon processors is summarized in the table below. More detailed information on some processors is either already available on our site, or will be posted on the site shortly.

Model	Cores	Frequency	L2 cache	L3 cache	TDP	Price
X7560	8	2.26 GHz	2 MB	24 MB	130 Watt	$3692
X7550	8	2 GHz	2 MB	18 MB	130 Watt	$2729
E7540	6	2 GHz	1.5 MB	18 MB	105 Watt	$1980
E7530	6	1.86 GHz	1.5 MB	18 MB	105 Watt	$1391
E7520	4	1.86 GHz	1 MB	18 MB	95 Watt	$856
L7555	8	1.86 GHz	2 MB	24 MB	95 Watt	$3157
L7545	6	1.86 GHz	1.5 MB	18 MB	95 Watt	$2087
X7542	6	2.66 GHz	1.5 MB	18 MB	130 Watt	$1980
X6550	8	2 GHz	2 MB	18 MB	130 Watt	$2461
E6540	6	2 GHz	1.5 MB	18 MB	105 Watt	$1712
E6510	4	1.73 GHz	1 MB	12 MB	105 Watt	$744