Intel Updates Processor Roadmap for 2013

Intel has a busy year of new processor product rollouts planned, as it continues to update its chips to take advantage of technology innovations. During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, unveiled details of upcoming Intel products targeting the server, networking and storage requirements of the data center.

The company will refresh its Intel Xeon and Atom processor lines with new generations of 22nm manufactured products. In coming months Intel will also begin production of new Intel Atom and Xeon processor E3, E5 and E7 families, featuring improved performance per watt and expanded feature sets, Bryant said.

Intel Atom for the Data Center

In December 2012, Intel launched the Intel Atom processor S1200 product family. Today, Intel revealed details of three new low-power SoCs (system on chip) for the data center, all coming in 2013.

• Intel Atom Processor S12x9 product family for Storage. Intel announced the availability of the low-power Intel Atom processor S12x9 family for storage deployments. This SoC shares several features with the Intel Atom S1200 processor product family, but contains technologies specifically geared for storage devices. With up to 40 lanes of integrated PCIe 2.0, or physical paths between I/O and the processor, the capacity demands of multiple devices can be handled more efficiently. Of the 40 lanes of PCIe* 2.0, there are 24 Root Port lanes and 16 Non Transparent Bridge lanes, for failover support.
• Avoton. In the second half of 2013, Intel will deliver the second generation of 64-bit Intel Atom processor for microservers, codenamed “Avoton.” Built on Intel’s leading 22nm process technology and new microarchitecture “Silvermont,” Avoton will feature an integrated Ethernet controller and expected to deliver significant improvements in performance-per-watt. Avoton is now being sampled to customers and the first systems are expected to be available in the second half of 2013.
• Rangeley. Intel will expand its presence in the network and communications infrastructure market by delivering an Intel® Atom™ processor based SoC codenamed “Rangeley,” also built on the 22nm process technology. Rangeley aims to provide an energy-efficient mechanism for processing communication workloads and is targeted for entry level to mid-range routers, switches and security appliances. Rangeley is targeted to be available in second half of 2013.

Intel Xeon processor E3 Family

This year, Intel will introduce the new Intel Xeon processor E3 1200 v3 product family, based on Haswell architecture. Intel continues to lower the power levels on the Intel Xeon processor E3 family; the lowest TDP will be 13 watts, approximately up to 25 percent lower than the prior generation. The improvement from eight transcode to 10 transcode with Haswell’s graphics capabilities also results in up to 25 percent improvement in transcode performance per watt for hardware accelerated media performance.

Intel Xeon processor E5 Family

Intel’s next-generation Intel Xeon processor E5 family will be based on the 22nm manufacturing process, and will be available in the third quarter of this year. These processors will support Intel Node Manager and Intel Data Center Manager Software. Security will also be improved with Intel Secure Key and Intel OS Guard which provide additional hardware-enhanced security  Intel OS Guard protects against privilege attacks by preventing malicious code from executing out of application memory space, in addition to data memory.

Intel Xeon Processor E7 Family

To support in-memory analytics and rapidly respond to scaling data sets, Intel is on-track for production availability of the next-generation Intel Xeon processor E7 family in the fourth quarter of 2013. Featuring triple the memory capacity – up to 12 Terabytes (TB) in an eight-socket node – this processor is ideal for data-demanding, transaction-intensive workloads such as in-memory databases and real-time business analytics.

• With the Intel Xeon processor E7 family, Intel is also announcing Intel® Run Sure Technology which will deliver greater system reliability and increased data integrity while minimizing the downtime for businesses running mission-critical workloads. These RAS features will be available with the next-generation Intel Xeon processor E7 family, and will be comprised of Resilient System Technologies, Resilient Memory Technologies.
• Resilient System Technologies includes standardized technologies integrating processor, firmware and software layers, including the OS, hypervisors and databases to allow the system to recover from previously fatal errors.
• Resilient Memory Technologies includes features to help ensure data integrity and enable systems to keep running reliably over a longer period of time, reducing the need for immediate service calls.