Intel guns for Unix vendors with high-end Xeon E7 platform

Intel has unveiled its Xeon E7 processor family aimed at high-end and mission-critical workloads, claiming a number of performance records for the new chips and aiming to extend the Intel architecture's dominance into territory traditionally occupied by Risc and Unix-based systems.

Available now, the Xeon E7 line-up consists of chips with six to ten cores each, split across three families - the E7-2800, E7-4800 and E7-8800 - aimed at servers with two, four or eight sockets. Originally known by the codename Westmere EX, the new line can scale up to systems with as many as 256 sockets, Intel said.

These are not based on the Sandy Bridge micro-architecture introduced at the start of this year, but on last year's Westmere architecture. Server chips based on Sandy Bridge are expected at the end of 2011.

Intel said the Xeon E7 chips build on its previous generation of server processors to set a new standard for mission-critical datacentre workloads, including databases, business intelligence, data analytics, as well as virtualisation.

To this end, the new chips support up to 2TB of memory, double that of the previous Xeon 7500 generation which the E7 replaces, plus security and reliability features required for mission-critical operation.

These consist of Intel's AES-NI instructions to accelerate encryption, its Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and Double Device Data Correction (DDDC) to guard against memory errors.

AES-NI and TXT were introduced with last year's Xeon chips, but DDDC is a reliability feature Intel has "waterfalled" down from its Itanium chips, according to Richard George, director of cloud services at Intel.

"It allows us to correct for double-bit hardware memory errors, which might become more common as people start to deploy more and more virtual machines in the cloud," he said.

DDDC complements the Machine Check Architecture (MCA) introduced on the Xeon 7500, which prevents a memory error affecting one virtual machine from bringing down the entire system.

These features appear to position the Xeon E7 in the same space as Itanium, which was originally intended to challenge the Risc and Unix vendors in the mission-critical market, but which failed to get broad industry support and is now effectively used only by HP in its Integrity systems.

George insisted that the E7 does not replace Itanium, but offers customers more choice, as the more familiar and cost-effective x86 architecture gains more of its mission-critical features.

"We have two platforms for mission critical, and we will continue to develop Itanium through Poulson and Kittson. Where Itanium is used for things like Unix, Xeon will be used where customers are now thinking about scale-out Linux, Windows and Solaris," he said.