Intel is releasing the Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 processor family (Broadwell-EX) for real-time analytics so that businesses can gain actionable insights from massive and complex data sets. The Xeon E7 v4 family is produced using Intel's 14nm mnaufacturing process.

The new family offers headroom for growth with traditional four- and eight-socket support, is designed for configurations up to 256 sockets via third-party node controllers, and is used in OEM system designs that currently feature up to 64 sockets. It also offers high memory capacity of up to 24TB in an eight-socket system, allowing massive datasets to be stored completely in memory, rather than on hard drives, to accelerate time to insight and decision-making.

The new chips are based on the Broadwell architecture and are socket compatible with the Xeon E7 v3 chips, meaning they can be plugged into existing servers using those sockets.

Seven new chips with between four to 24 cores are being introduced in the Xeon E7-8800 v4 family.

The Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 chip is part of the Xeon E7-8800 v4. The 24-core chip will go, in many cases, into monster performer four- to eight-socket servers. An eight-socket system could have up to 192 cores, with support for up to 24TB of memory.

The 24-core Xeon E7-8890 v4 has a frequency of 2.2GHz, 60MB of cache, and draws 165 watts of power. The other chips in the E7 8800 line have clock speeds from 2.1GHz to 3.2GHz, cache between 45MB to 60MB, and draw between 140 watts and 165 watts of power.

Intel estimated a 192-core system with 2TB of memory and two hard drives to be priced at about US$165,000. Add 24TB of memory, and the server price could skyrocket.

About 18 server makers are coming out with 51 systems running the new processors, according to Intel.

Intel also announced Xeon E7-4800 v4 series chips, which have between eight and 16 cores, draw 115 watts of power, and have 20MB to 40MB of cache. The chips have slower internal bandwidth but are designed for lower priced high-performance computers.

Performance figures

Based on Intel internal analysis, using the new Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v4 (60M Cache, 2.20 GHz) delivers more capabilities, larger memory capacity and microarchitecture enhancements for VM enter/exit latency reduction in a virtualized environment compared to prior generations.

• Up to double the queries per hour answered
  • up to 1.3x average performance across key industry-standard workloads
    
• Up to 35% more virtual machines (VMs) and infrastructure applications throughput supported with same service-level agreement level to help IT grow line-of -business (LOB) heterogeneous needs
  

Further details show servers with Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v4:

• Based on Intel internal analysis, compared to previous generation Intel Xeon processor E7-8890 v3 (45M Cache, 2.5 GHz, formerly codenamed "Haswell-EX") using the same platform delivers up to:
  
  • 33% more benchmark users supported with SAP SD-tier ERP workload
  • 30% more On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) database
    transactions to support
  • 24% more query navigation steps using in-memory analytics with SAP HANA* through the new SAP Business Warehouse-Advanced Mixed Load (BW-AML) benchmark
    

Over the previous two generations Intel Xeon processor E7-4890 v2 (37.5M Cache, 2.8 GHz, formerly codenamed "Ivy Bridge-EX") using the same platform demonstrates, based on Intel internal analysis, up to:

• 4.6x faster ad-hoc queries
• 2.9x financial risk insights generational speed up with STAC-M3 theoretical profit and loss workload using 6TB of DDR4 memory
• Double the number of VMs
  

Versus the broadest installed base of Intel Xeon processor E7 servers (formerly codenamed "Westmere -EX") provides, based on Intel internal analysis, up to:

• 3.7x more VMs for improving utilization while maintaining SLAs
• 2.9x more benchmark users supported with SAP SD-tier ERP using SQL Server
• 2.8x more OLTP database transactions to support peak demands on supply chain

Intel The Xeon E7 v4 features

The processors include reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features, including Intel Run Sure Technology that is unique to the Intel Xeon processor E7 family. These RAS features offer advanced data integrity and mission-critical system readiness that reduces the frequency and cost of server downtime. In addition, improved error recovery mechanisms and features such as memory mirroring offer exceptional data reliability without driving up system-wide memory requirements.

New security features built into the processors protect the most mission-critical, data-rich applications by encrypting data much faster, improving detection of sophisticated threats and increasing protection against malicious attacks. The hardware-enhanced security capabilities in the processors provide up to 70 percent more encryption performance per core, meaning that organizations can better protect a data with minimal impact to their system?s performance, while delivering improved malware safeguards. In addition, the Intel OS Guard now includes Supervisor Mode Access Protection o enable privileged access implementations that offer IT more control over which users have access to sensitive system data and also help prevent a malicious user from extending those vulnerabilities and exploiting other systems across the data center.

Enhanced hardware-assisted virtualization allows IT to virtualize mission-critical enterprise workloads and move them into cloud-scale environments for new levels of agility and efficiency. Improvements in virtualization performance and resource management include lower latencies when entering and exiting virtual machines (VMs), fewer VM interrupts via posted interrupts, and less overhead in fault-tolerant environments with page modification logging.

The Intel Xeon processor E7 v4 family also includes advanced telemetry features and orchestration technologies such as the Intel Resource Director Technology. These features provide deeper visibility and control over shared platform resources, resulting in efficient scheduling, load balancing and workload migration across virtual machines.