Intel's high-end x86-based CPU chips, pronounced "zee-ahn. No matter what the current Intel chip series (Pentium, Core 2, Core "iX" etc.), there are high-end Xeon chips that use the same microarchitecture but go by their own Xeon brand and designations. Designed for servers and fast workstations, Xeon chips include error-checking memory (see ECC) and system management features (see SMBus) not found in the regular chips. Xeons have the fastest system buses, caches and memory capacities with some models directly addressing a terabyte of memory.
The first Xeon was introduced in 1998 when the Pentium CPU was mainstream. Intel initially kept the Pentium name (Xeon Pentium II, Xeon Pentium III) but dropped it with Pentium 4. Xeon chips are identified by their numeric series designations (5600 Series, 7500 Series, etc.). In the past, they were also called Xeon DP (dual processor) and Xeon MP (multiprocessor - four or more cores). See x86, Intel Core and Itanium.
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