Last week Intel Vice President Stephen Smith opened some components relative to the plans of company for the release of processor, which will become the successor of 8 core processor xeon (Nehalem-EX). In comparison with its predecessor, new server processor will have more core and will work at the higher frequencies.
Now this development is known under the code name westmere-EX. The processors westmere-EX will be intended for servers with four or more processor socket. Important difference between Nehalem-EX and Westmere-EX will become passage in the production from the 45 nm to the 32 nm standards. This will allow to preserve the energy consumption of processors with the large number of core and higher clock frequency at the previous level.
The first 32-nm processors Intel for servers and work stations (Westmere-EP) were released during March and entered in series xeon 5600. They have up to six core and can work in one- and two-processor systems. The maximum frequency of six-core model xeon x5680 is equal to 3,33 GHz.
The appearance period of new processors is next year. It is known only that the new processors will preserve compatibility at the processor level with Nehalem-EX.
AMD already have server processors with 12 core : this the presented during March models series AMD opteron 6000. Next year AMD plans to release the 32-nm processors interlagos with 16 core, built on bulldozer micro-architecture .