Intel this week unveiled its its new Xeon 7500 series of processors, codenamed Nehalem-EX.



The new processors have up to eight cores inside, letting servers run applications on up to 16 threads per processor. Servers built with four Nehalem-EX sockets can address up to 1 TB of memory, or four times that of servers based on the original Nehalem processor, introduced last year.



Intel said that improved scalability, performance, and reliability in the Xeon 7500 processors will let IT managers consolidate up to 20 older single-core, 4-chip servers onto a single server while maintaining the same level of performance, giving them up to an estimated 92 percent reduction in energy costs.



The company also said it is working with system vendors to deliver highly scalable systems with up to 16 processors for enterprise customers and up to 256 processors with 16 TB of memory for high- performance computing nodes.