Intel launched seven 45 nanometer (nm)-manufactured Intel Xeon Processor 7400 Series products, offering up to six processing cores per chip and 16MB of shared cache memory. Platforms based on these processors can scale up to 16 processor "sockets" to deliver servers with up to 96 processing cores inside, offering tremendous scalability, ample computing threads and extensive memory resources.

"The arrival of these processors extends Intel's lead in the high-end server segment," said Tom Kilroy, Intel vice president and general manager of the Digital Enterprise Group. "This new processor series helps IT manage increasingly complex enterprise server environments, providing a great opportunity to boost the scalable performance of multi-threaded applications within a stable platform infrastructure. With new features such as additional cores, large shared caches and advanced virtualization technologies, the Xeon 7400 series delivers record-breaking performance that will lead enterprises into the next wave of virtualization deployments."

The Intel Xeon processor 7400 series has already set new four-socket and eight-socket world records on key industry benchmarks for virtualization, database, enterprise resource planning and e-commerce. IBM, following the record-setting 1.2 million tpmC result on its eight-socket System x 3950 M2 platform, delivers an all-time high result for four-socket servers on System x 3850 M2 server with a score of 684,508 tpmC on the TPC-C benchmark, which measures database performance in an online transaction processing environment.

Based on Intel's 45nm high-k process technology and reinvented transistors that use a Hafnium-based, high-k metal gate formula, the new Xeon 7400 series delivers significant performance improvements with lower power consumption. This delivers almost 50 percent better performance in some cases, and up to 10 percent reduction in platform power, and has resulted in a world record VMmark (a virtualization benchmark) score for four-socket, 24 processing core servers at 18.49 on a Dell PowerEdge R900 platform using VMware ESX server v3.5.0.

These products offer frequencies up to 2.66 GHz and power levels down to 50 watts, including the first 6-core, x86 compatible 65-watt version which translates to just under 11 watts per processor core, with platforms available in rack, tower and highly dense blade form factors.

Below you can see the complete series of the Intel 7400 processors.

Model	Number of cores	Frequency	FSB	L3 cache	TDP
X7460	6	2,66 GHz	1,066 MHz	16MB	130W
E7450		2.40 GHz		12MB	90W
L7455		2.13 GHz			65W
E7440	4	2.40 GHz		16MB	90W
E7430		2.13 GHz		12MB
E7420				8MB
E7445				12MB	50W

The Xeon 7400 processor series is compatible with Intel's existing Xeon 7300 series platforms and the Intel 7300 chipset with memory capacity up to 256GB, allowing IT departments to quickly deploy the new processor into a stable platform infrastructure.

Pricing for the Xeon 7000 Sequence processors in quantities of 1,000 ranges from $856 to $2,729.