Intel Corporation has introduced the Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v2 product family, a set of processors that promise to redefine the server, storage and networking infrastructure found in data centers. With greater efficiency and flexibility, these processors will enable the rapid delivery of services for high performance computing, cloud and enterprise segments, and offer compelling new opportunities for telecommunications vendors.
The new Xeon product family is based on Intel’s leading 22-nanometer process technology, contributing to dramatic energy efficiency improvements of up to 451% when compared to the previous generation. The processor family also features up to 12 cores and delivers up to 50% more performance across variety of compute intensive workloads.
“More than ever, organizations are looking to information technology to transform their businesses,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group at Intel. “Offering new cloud-based services requires an infrastructure that is versatile enough to support the diverse workloads and is flexible enough to respond to changes in resource demand across servers, storage and network.”
Much of the infrastructure today is not architected to support the growth in IT services. Datacenter management is often manual and static. To enable on-demand, automated services, the next generation of datacenters will need to evolve to a “software defined infrastructure” where many of the functions are managed in software. The new Intel Xeon processors provide a common, software compatible processing foundation and possess the features and tools to help transform datacenters for the future.
The Intel Xeon processors E5-2600 v2 product family will power the new IBM NeXtScale System, a high-density, flexible computing platform designed for high-demand workloads such as analytics, technical computing and cloud delivery. Intel’s newest processor family also will be used in IBM’s new x3650 M4 HD high-density storage server, ideal for managing big data and business-critical workloads, as well as all of IBM’s two-socket systems including System x racks and towers, Flex System, iDataPlex, and BladeCenter offerings.
Using Intel’s Open Network Platform (ONP) server reference design, customers can use high-volume Xeon-based servers combined with industry open standards to consolidate virtualized networking applications. This allows them to deliver market leading throughput performance and latency for Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) workloads. Intel’s ONP server reference design is based on the Wind River Open Virtualization Profile and the Intel Data Plane Development Kit Accelerated Open vSwitch.
HP is an ecosystem partner for Intel’s ONP server and switch reference design. “Organizations are looking for more open, industry standard technology to support complex IT demands, whether they are cloud based-applications, support for virtualized environments or for replacing expensive appliances, such as firewalls, VPNs, and edge routers,” said Werner Schaefer, vice president of Market and Business Development, HP Servers. “These reference designs with innovative HP ProLiant Gen8 Servers and HP Networking solutions allow customers to consolidate networking workloads, reduce deployment costs and shorten provisioning time.”
To assist in accelerating the deployment of software defined infrastructures, Intel also announced Intel Network Builders ecosystem. The program allows ecosystem partners to take advantage of Intel’s reference architecture platforms to accelerate SDN and NFV deployments. With more than 20 leading technology companies contributing, Intel’s partners will be able to access a comprehensive reference architecture library of proven solutions to build and optimize software-defined infrastructure based on today’s telecommunications, cloud, and enterprise datacenter requirements.
The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family is also designed to power cost efficient scale-out, distributed, and software defined storage. From 2012 to 2020 the amount of stored data will double every two years5, reaching 40ZB. Fast, on-demand access to this amount of data for tasks such as big data analytics require more intelligent compute and storage intensive solutions, as well as a dramatic decrease in the cost-per-stored terabyte.
Dell has selected the new processors for its upcoming storage solution. “The Intel Xeon processor E5 v2 family provides a great hardware base for Dell’s high performance, innovative solutions like our PowerEdge VRTX and intelligent tiered Compellent storage solutions,” said Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager of Dell Server Solutions.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a new agreement with Intel that communicates the “Intel Inside” brand, letting its customers know that the services it provides are utilizing Intel technologies. AWS services that exclusively use Intel Xeon processors – intended for basic to performance-intensive use cases, will include the brand.AWS plans to add the latest Xeon processor family to its datacenters later this year.
The Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family will be offered with 18 different parts which range in price from $202 to $2,614 in quantities of 1,000. Additionally three single-socket Intel Xeon processor E5-1600 parts will be offered for workstations which range in price from $294 to $1080.