New Xeon DP Offers Dual Action

But as impressive as the Xeon model was, it wasn't enough. Less than six months later, Intel has upped the stakes and introduced an enhanced Xeon processor for DP systems that offers the fastest clock speed of the Xeon processor DP family.

Talk about speedy developments. In the lightning-quick microprocessor and chip market, Intel is trying to stay as nimble and swift as a technology manufacturer can possibly be. And with good reason: AMD, the distant No. 2 chipmaker in the industry, has turned up the heat recently with its popular Athlon and Opteron product lines, and soundly beat rival Intel to the punch with its 64-bit technology.

Nevertheless, Intel doesn't appear concerned. Instead, the company is continuing its obsessive practice of increasing speed and performance of its Xeon line.

"We keep refreshing our product road map with higher frequencies and better performance; the new Xeon DP is all part of that plan," says Hemant Dhulla, director of marketing for Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. "This is taking the next step forward for frequencies."

Fast Memory Reservoir
The Intel Xeon processor released in July works at 3.06 GHz and features a 1-MB L3 cache with a 533-MHz system bus. The newest Xeon DP, however, stands at 3.20 GHz with a 1-MB cache and a 533-MHz system bus. The model is best-suited for general-purpose servers for such tasks as Web hosting, data caching and security, as well as high-performance computing. In addition, the new Xeon DP benefits workstations, granting increased bandwidth for digital-content creation, mechanical and electrical design, and cumbersome calculations, according to Dhulla.

"The primary benefit will be for front-end servers because the kinds of applications in the systems will get a performance boost," he says. "Workstations will also gain from the bandwidth and frequency increases."

The Xeon DP processor's on-die cache also provides a big plus. Data stored in the cache can be accessed more quickly than data stored on the hard drive or other system memory, and therefore offers higher data throughput and a larger user capacity, according to Intel. Perhaps the most crucial feature is that the new Xeon DP, like its predecessor in July, offers drop-in compatibility with older models designed with the Intel E7501 (for servers) or Intel E7505 (for workstations) chipsets, Intel PRO Gigabit Ethernet Network Connections and Intel Server RAID Controllers. The processors are also hardware-compatible with systems from most vendors, as well as with Intel Server products using dual Intel Xeon processors.

"In a DP server, OEMs would usually sell on a 12- to 18-month cycle, followed by a refresh," Dhulla says. "Now every three to six months, you can boost the CPU frequencies and cache sizes easily without having to reconstruct the system around a new processor."

The Xeon DP family is also part of Intel's "real server" campaign, which is a new program educating small to midsize businesses on server technology and enterprise computing. Intel is promoting high-bandwidth connections such as Gigabit Ethernet, high-capacity storage such as RAID, and a server operating system with multiuser applications on an Intel processor platform to help lower operating costs and improve server performance for SMB customers.

That's all good news for systems builders and OEMs looking to build on Intel's Xeon line. But Dhulla says the new Xeon DP isn't a volume product for Intel and, therefore, won't see widespread availability in the channel in the near term.

"When you look at Intel's top SKUs and high-end products, they're usually in low volume," he says. "This is premium product, so it won't be sold with volume sales in mind."

Still, the chip giant plans on delivering the Xeon DP to some systems builders as well as a few of its bigger OEM partners, such as Dell. The Intel Xeon processor is now available worldwide for $851 each in 1,000-unit quantities.

Going Hyper
In addition to the new Xeon processor, Intel also unleashed new chips that support its Hyper-Threading (HT) technology. The chipmaker expanded this support to its new Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processors--a first for notebook PCs.

The Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor supporting HT technology offers frequencies of up to 3.20 GHz and power-management features that enable lower thermals than its desktop counterpart. Notebooks based on the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor supporting HT technology are designed to allow users to better take advantage of such multithreaded and processor-intensive multimedia applications as video encoding, digital media and gaming, according to Intel. Thus, the HT technology will help notebooks pack a lot more power.

Intel officials say the company's HT technology also allows a notebook PC's processor to work simultaneously on two separate threads, which can improve performance when multiple applications are running. The company is also promoting HT's enhanced responsiveness and performance application multitasking.

The Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor supporting HT technology works with the Intel 852GME and Intel 852PM chipsets and is built on the Intel NetBurst micro-architecture. It features a 533-MHz system bus and supports advanced mobile power management, including Enhanced Intel SpeedStep technology, Deep Sleep and Deeper Sleep.

Market research firm IDC recently reported that Intel increased its x86 PC processor market share in the second quarter of 2003, particularly boosting its mobile PC processor segment by 3 percent. According to IDC, Intel's worldwide x86 PC microprocessor increased market share by 1.2 percent to 81.6 percent of the total market.

The market research firm adds that higher average selling prices for desktop processors made possible by HT technology and the new 800-MHz front-side bus, as well as mobile PC processor unit shipments and the higher average selling prices of those units, helped to compensate for modestly lower desktop PC processor unit shipments. Thus, Intel's HT technology may pay some big dividends in 2004.

Overall, Intel appears to be achieving success without 64-bit computing. The chipmaker's third-quarter performance, which smashed Wall Street's expectations, was as close to a home run as any results the microprocessor market has seen in about two years. For the three months ended Sept. 30, Intel earned $1.7 billion, or 25 cents a share, in profits on $7.8 billion in revenue, which is a 20 percent increase from the same quarter one year ago.

Intel officials say the third-quarter increase was far above seasonal averages, though they couldn't say what caused the spike in sales. The company credited the quarter's success to Intel's microprocessor group, which saw record shipments for processors, chipsets and motherboards in the third quarter. That bucks the recent trend of disappointing chips sales worldwide, but both Intel and analysts warn the quarter's performance doesn't necessarily mean the economy or the IT industry is in full recovery yet.

Analysts say Intel has benefited from the stabilization of microprocessor pricing, as well as shipments to developing nations overseas. Intel officials were cautious about the fourth quarter, considering IT budgets are still tight, but increased sales and stable pricing certainly isn't bad news for the white-box channel.