Intel has just released the Xeon E7 v2 Lineup, high end SKUs that are part of the Ivy Bridge-EX family. The configurations scale up to 15 Cores and 30 Threads and represent the "Ivytown" series of processors. Preceded by Westmere-EX, Ivy Bridge-EX is the ultra high end spectrum of processors from Intel, second only to Itanium.

Intel Xeon E7 v2 Releases with High End SKU Lineup - Ivy Bridge-EX is Finally Here

A couple of things have changed since the last iteration that was Westmere-EX. For one the previous only supported upto 10 cores where as Xeon E7 v2 is 15 cores (duh). Also the Xeon E7 v2 populates the 32 Socket servers. Comparing westmere-ex to ivy bridge-ex we get the following.

Intel’s upcomingXeon E7 ‘Ivy Bridge-EX’lineup launches this year which delivers an unprecedented amounts of performance for HPC needs. Intel is preparing their flagship Xeon E7-8890 V2 chip codenamed Ivytown which is the first chip from Intel to boast a core count of 15 coming one step closer to AMD’s Opteron 6300 series which has 16 cores on the top most model.

The chip features an insane 4.31 billion transistors and a massive die size of 541mm2with a modular architecture which splits the cores into blocks of three, each block has five cores with their own L3 cache, embedded ring bus and I/O. This modular architecture would scale from top to bottom of the Xeon E7 lineup with Intel shifting and removing the columns to offer cost effective SKUs. The chipfeatures 37.5 MB L3 cache and a TDP of 155 Watts. According to the rumor mill, the flagship part could cost well over $5000 US. In an 8 Socket environment, eight of these chips would amount to 120 cores and 240 threads with a 300 MB cache shared via QPI v1.1. The frequency of the chip is toned down to 2.8 GHz but there are tons of models ranging in core configuration and clock speeds which can be found in the specification chart posted at the end of this article.

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Ivy Bridge-EX is based on the C600 series chipset but would support more memory configurations up to 12 TB. Beyond the expected ECC DDR3-1600 memory, the CPUs would also support DDR4-2133/2400/3200 memory. The wafer pictures reveal 3 combinations for the die of Xeon E7 v2. Though ofcourse it goes without saying thatthe best thing to go for in Ivy Bridge-EX are the RAS features. Here is the configuration break down:

15 Cores, 37.5MB L3 Cache and 4.31 Billion Transistors with 541mm^2 Density.10 Cores, 25 MB L3 Cache and 2.89 Billion Transistors with 341mm^2 Density.6 Cores, 15MB L3 Cache and 1.86 Billion Transistors with 257mm^2 Density.

Without any further ado, this is the lineup of the Ivy Bridge-EX 'Xeon E7 v2' Lineup:

Intel Ivy Bridge-EX Xeon E7 Family Lineup:

Intel Ivy Bridge-EX Die Shot / Close Ups:

Intel Ivy Bridge-EX SKUs Prices / Tier Placement:

Intel Ivy Bridge-EX Architecture / Performance / Presentation Slides:

#Intel Ivy Bridge-EX is here. Xeon E7 v2 Lineup revealed. RAS, nuff said. http://t.co/Oj4rNfx4Hb

— Usman Pirzada (@usmanpirzada) February 19, 2014