Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 Product Family Review

The recently launched Intel® Broadwell-EP Xeon® E5-2600 v4 Processor series focuses on improving performance, security, agility, and utilization for compute, storage, and network infrastructure. At the same time, it is minimizing the total cost of ownership by taking performance and efficiency to new heights. The new versatile and powerful processor family is compatible with existing 2011-3 motherboards and each processor has gained 2 or 4 cores, an extra 5MB or 10MB L3 cache, and an additional 266 MHz memory per processor over the previous generation. Even with these upgrades, the v4 series is extremely efficient as power consumption has been minimized to almost v3 model levels. With HyperThreading technology, the v4 8 – 22 core processors possess effectively up to 44 threads per processor and tout up to 55 MB of total cache, 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and a max supported ram of DDR4-2400. Compatible with the C610 series chipset, the platform also utilizes the newest 14nm process node.

What does this mean?

The v4 product family provides up to +20% more cores and +20% more cache, while the support for 2400 MT/S DDR4 memory allows for greater I/O throughput.

Due to the additional cores, and an arsenal number of hardware/software improvements including Intel's Resource Director Technology and Cache Monitoring Technology, processor performance has significantly improved, making the Broadwell-EP series powerful and the new standard for data centers and other supercomputer systems. Particularly crucial for this industry, Intel has also significantly beefed up its security via better key encryption algorithms, boasting improvements of up to 70%. The processors maximize efficiency, performance and flexibility for current and future application processes and are optimized for data center orchestration, deep learning, HPC, SDI, cloud, virtualization projects, and beyond.

Here's how the new v4 family compares to the previous v3 family:

	Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 Product Family	Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 Product Family
Socket	Socket R3	Socket R3
Process Technology	22 nm	14 nm
Architecture	Haswell Architecture	Broadwell Architecture
Max Core/Thread Count	Up to 18 cores / 36 threads	Up to 22 cores / 44 threads
Memory Support	4x DDR4 channels	4x DDR4 channels
Memory Speed	Up to 2133 MT/s	Up to 2400 MT/s
Max: Memory Channels / DIMM Slots / Capacity	8 / 24 / 1536 GB	8 / 24 / 1536 GB
QPI Ports	2x QPI 1.1 channels 6.4, 8.0, 9.6 GT/s	2x QPI 1.1 channels 6.4, 8.0, 9.6 GT/s
PCIe* Lanes / Controllers	40 / 10 / PCIe* 3.0 (2.5, 5, 8 GT/s)	40 / 10 / PCIe* 3.0 (2.5, 5, 8 GT/s)
TDP (W)	Up to 145W Server; 160W Workstation only	Up to 145W Server; 160W Workstation only
Chipset	Intel* C610 series chipset (Wellsburg PCH)	Intel* C610 series chipset (Wellsburg PCH)
Connectivity	Up to 40GbE - Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 (Fortville)	Up to 40GbE - Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 (Fortville)

The forerunner of the new family will be the Intel Xeon E5-2699 v4, with 22 cores, 44 threads, and 55 MB L3 cache; with a base clock speed of 2.2 GHz, and boost clock of ~3.6 GHz, but only costing ~145W TDP, the E5-2699 is an prime example of the immense processing power that the Broadwell-EP family delivers to workstation and server applications.

You can find many of the v4 series family processors available now in a number of Exxact custom systems. The v4 series family processors are socket-compatible with all E5-2600 v3 platforms, so existing v3-based systems can be upgraded. We have also developed workstations and servers based on the v4 series family processors which can be customized to deliver the best combination of performance, built-in capabilities, and cost effectiveness.

Visit our Intel Xeon Scalable Solutions page to learn more!

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