Intel Nehalem-EX Aims for the Mainframe

Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, is gunning for the mission-critical server space with the launch of the new Xeon 6500/7500 processor lines. It’s a bid that will see it taking on mainframes and RISC, but the company says that its newest offerings have the goods.

In particular, the new models boast steep performance improvements and enhancements like RAS features seen in RISC and Itanium platforms. And to drive home the impact Intel wants to have in the space, the chipmaking giant trotted out a host of hardware partners to show off new systems based around new four- and eight-way Xeon processors, and software and virtualization vendors to pledge their support. HardwareCentral takes a look.

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel is targeting the mainframe and RISC systems market with its new Xeon 6500/7500 lines of server processors that offer many features normally reserved for those high end systems.

The two processor lines were developed under the Nehalem-EX codename . The 6500 is meant for economical two-socket designs while the 7500 is for two- to eight-socket servers. They can address much more memory than previous Xeons and feature reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) designed to support 24/7/365 operation. These processors are specifically aimed at high-performance computing (HPC) and mission-critical computing.

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Intel’s Nehalem-EX Targets Mainframe, RISC Systems