New line of Xeon processors launched by Intel

Intel launched its Xeon 7100 series of processors today. These dual-core server chips, previously codenamed ‘Tulsa’, have been part of Intel’s enterprise processor roadmap since 2003.

The 7100 series delivers a number of improvements on the previous Xeon range including an increase in the performance per watt of the processors. Intel has also focused on reducing their power draw. To this end, low power editions of the 7100 consume just 95W.

The Xeon range is split into the M-series and N-series. The M-series has a faster front-side bus of 800MHz compared to the N-series’ 667MHz. Clock speeds range from 2.5GHz for the 7110N to 3.4GHz for the 7140M.

Both cores of the top-end Xeon 7100s can access up to 16MB of shared L3 cache while lower models come equipped with either 4MB or 8MB.

This is just one of a number of processor launches from Intel this summer. Others include the release of desktop and notebook versions of the Core 2 Duo.