Intel touts new Xeon 5600 server chips
Intel launched its latest server chips designed for next generation datacentres on Tuesday and is pitching a five-month return on investment for customers using single core servers — a third of the customer base — and a 15-month payback for more modern machines.
The chip giant's challenge is to position its latest server chips — the Xeon 5600 family — for customers who have been putting off server upgrades. The single core crowd can get a 15:1 server consolidation ration with the latest Xeons. Intel's positioning is worth noting as research firms and vendors have been preaching that a server upgrade cycle is about to break out. Boyd Davis, general manager Intel's datacentre group marketing, broke out a blitz of performance enhancements and noted that upgrading was an "economic no brainer".
The server family has two new security features — Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI) and Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) — to enable better security for virtualised environments. The technology is essentially an effort to provide a better foundation for cloud computing security. AES-NI accelerates performance for database encryption, full disk encryption and secure Internet transactions. TXT provides protection for applications that move between virtual servers.
For more on this story, see Will Intel's latest Xeon lineup be an 'economic no brainer'? on ZDNet.com.