Intel 6-core Xeon to arrive September 16th

Good news for the server industry, the first 6-core CPU Xeon processor is closer than you think, less than two weeks. The chip is absed on codename Dunnington and will start shipping on September 15th under the label Xeon 7400 series. The processor is the first multi-core design from Intel to have its cores joined in a single die rather than to graft multiple cores together, potentially speeding up operations with multiple program threads by cutting back on the time spent moving data between cores.

This multi-thread awareness will also be helped by the 16MB of Level 2 cache, which serves as the most for any x86-based Intel chip and is shared between all the cores.

Intel hasn't announced any clock speeds for the Xeon 7400 series but will likely keep to its earlier patterns and target the six-core processor at high-end workstations and servers where a large number of parallel tasks is essential. The design is the last new Penryn-era processor and will be followed later in the fall by the Core i7 (formerly Nehalem) architecture for future Xeon chips.