Intel Corp., as expected, introduced a breed of new platform components for multiprocessor servers. Targeted at the mid-tier enterprise market segment, the platform consists of five new Xeon MP processors for servers that use four or more processors, and a new chipset.
Intel"s E8500 Uncovered
The main building block of Intel"s new server platform is E8500 chipset designed to support up to 4-way machines. The E8500 consists of three or more chips: the north bridge (NB), the external memory bridge (EMB) and the ICH5 I/O controller. The north bridge supports two processor system busses, which allows two chips to share one 667MHz bus with, 10.6GB/s bandwidth, which is likely to give new Intel-based servers an advantage over previous generations of Xeon MP-powered systems that had to share one 400MHz processor system bus with 6.40GB/s bandwidth between four chips.