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Intel is ramping up its new “Caneland” platform for a third-quarter launch and has already begun releasing the microprocessor and chip set to its OEM partners.
In addition, the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker has revealed the official product name for the new platform. The processors, which had gone by the code name Tigerton, will be known as the Intel 7300 processor. The chip set—code-named Clarksboro—will be known as Intel 7300 chip set.
These and other details of the new platform were posted July 24 on an Intel company blog. The blog also offers a six-minute interview with Kirk Skaugen, vice president and General Manager of Intels Server Products Group.
In the interview, Skaugen said that the new Xeon 7300 quad-core processors, which started shipping to partners in June, will offer twice the performance and twice the performance per watt compared with the current dual-core Xeon 7100 series processors. The new processor will offer a TDP—an Intel term that refers to how much heat a chip has to dissipate—of 80 watts for standard rack systems and 50 watts for ultradense and blade servers.
Although not in the interview, the blog posting says that the clock speed of the Xeon 7300 will top out at 2.93GHz.
With Intel releasing its Caneland platform in the third quarter and its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, preparing to begin shipping its much anticipated quad-core Opteron processor—Barcelona—both companies are looking to shift their strategies from the low-end of the market, mainly desktops, to the high-end of the market.
Both the Caneland and Barcelona platforms are expected to make the biggest impact in the MP (multiprocessor) server space. In his interview, Skaugen mentions that the Intel platform will be showing up in blade servers and high-density systems.
The release of Caneland platform also completes Intels conversion of its microprocessors to its Core microarchitecture. The companys next step is the introduction of the “Penryn” family of dual- and quad-core processors that will be manufactured at 45-nanometers.
All the Caneland-based platforms will be compatible with the companys 45-nanometer processors, according to Intel.