Intel unleashes new Xeon E7 v4 CPUs including 24-core monster

Intel has unleashed its new Xeon E7-8800 and E7-4800 v4 range of processors which offer what the company claims is remarkable performance improvements over predecessors, with CPUs boasting up to 24-cores.

The Xeon E7-8890 v4 is the high-end 24-core effort (running at 2.2GHz with 60MB of last-level cache), and it offers 1.3 times faster performance than the previous generation when put through the paces of key industry benchmarks.

Like the other processors in the family, it will support 3TB of memory per socket, so in an eight-socket system you'll be able to have a whopping 24TB of memory.

These processors are designed for heavy duty applications in the enterprise, analytics and data crunching on a massive scale, and that impressive memory capacity means large datasets can be stored directly in memory rather than on drives, allowing for much faster results.

Intel further asserts that the E7 v4 range is capable of up to 1.4 times higher performance than IBM Power8-based offerings (and up to 10 times better performance for the dollar, no less).

Secure as houses

Obviously performance isn't the only concern, and Intel has made advances on the reliability and security fronts too.

The company says the new processors have over 70 RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) features and improved error recovery mechanisms, and new security features that allow for the encryption of data at a much faster speed. In fact, the CPUs offer up to 70% more encryption performance per core, so keeping your data secure is much less of a drain on system resources.

In a press statement, Intel noted the importance of data crunching and analytics these days: "The key opportunity is turning the massive amount of core business data plus new sources of unstructured data into actionable and timely insights. In fact, research is finding that companies that use data-driven insights are two times more likely to have top quartile financial performance and five times more likely to make decisions faster than their competition."

In short, it's a data-driven world out there, and Intel's new processors will help companies make sense of all their data in a much more efficient and timely fashion.