Intel slims low-power Xeon chips to 45nm

New 50W chips bump clock speed and cache

By Austin Modine • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise, 26th March 2008 01:53 GMT

Intel today introduced two 45-nanometer, low voltage server processors to outpace its previous generation of 65nm energy-efficient wares.

The quad-core Xeon L5400 series is up to 25 per cent faster than the preceding chips while keeping power consumption at a 50-watt thermal envelope, Chipzilla says.

L5400 chips come in two varieties: the L5420 running at 2.50GHz and the L5410 at 2.33GHz. The chips will replace current Clovertown core L5320 and L5310, which top out 50W consumption at 1.86GHz.

Both L5400 series processors have 12MB of on-die cache and dedicated 1333MHz front side buses. That's a rise from a previous 8MB cache and 1066MHz bus in the L5300 models.

The L5410 is priced at $320, and L5420 at $380 in 1000-unit orders. L5310 and L5320 remain at $209 and $256 respectively.

Vendors supporting the new low-power Xeon chips include Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, and NEC.

Intel expects to ship the L5210 dual-core, 3GHz processor with a 40W rating (with 6MB cache and 1333MHz FSB) in Q2 2008 . ®

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