Intel Haswell-EX to offer up to 18 cores

Intel's new Haswell-EX server processors are expected to be released in Q2 2015. CPU World got its hands on partial specifications and reveals four of the higher-end models will feature 18 cores. The fastest version is the Xeon E7-8890 v3, an eighteen-core monster with 2.5GHz clockspeed, 45MB L3 cache and a 165W TDP. The Xeon E7-8891 v3 seems to be a similar chip with ten-cores clocked at 2.8GHz and 165W TDP, while the quad-core Xeon E7-8893 v3 takes the frequency to 3.2GHz while sticking to a 140W TDP.

Third generation Xeon E7 processors for mission-critical servers are likely to launch next quarter. These Xeon processors, built on Haswell-EX core, will incorporate such improvements as increased number of cores, larger L3 cache, new AVX and TSX instructions, along with added support for DDR4 memory. Based on previous reports, there will a couple of significant changes in the E7 v3 lineup. Most importantly, Intel is not going to release E7-2800 v3 CPUs for two-way servers, and the E7-4800 v3 series for 4-way servers will be missing all high end models. This will effectively reduce the number of SKUs from 19 (in the v2 series) to 12 in the v3 series, including four E7-4800 v3 models, and eight E7-8800 v3 models. Some characteristics of these processors we recently found in X series price list (CSV file) and in System x3850 X6 and x3950 X6 Installation and Service Guide (large PDF file) documents on the IBM website.