Intel Westmere 32nm 6-core Xeon 5600
Intel Nehalem 45nm 8-core Xeon 7500
AMD 12-core Magny Cours Opteron
Intel and AMD have release a slew of high end x86 multicore microprocessors targeting a wide range of server platforms including those designed for the cloud and enterprise server farms. They increase the number of cores and threads per chip while reducing overall power requirements. They take advantage of the latest low power DDR3 memory subsystems.
The 6-core Intel Xeon 5600 is built on the latest 32nm Westmere platform. It incorporates the latest Advanced Encryption Stardard New Instructions (AES-NI).
The 8-core Intel Nehalem Xeon 7500 delivers 8-cores and is based on the 45nm Nehalem architecture. It targets the high end of the server market with three times the performance of previous chips. It uses QuickPath high speed interconnects.
AMD's 12-core Magny Cours Opteron line challenges Intel's Xeon. It delivers a significant boost using additional memory and HyperTransort channels. The chips now have 4 memory channels and 4 HyperTransport links The platform doubles the performance compared to prior models.