Apr, 2010 : SoftLayer Offers New Intel Westmere Servers

📅 April 2, 2010 - New Servers feature second generation of high-k/metal gate processors.

SoftLayer Technologies, a provider of on-demand data center, hosting, and cloud services, announced that it is the first in its industry to offer servers featuring the new Westmere family of Intel Xeon processors. The company states that formerly referred to as the Nehalem-C series, Westmere processors feature up to six cores per chip, up to 12 threads per socket, and 12MB on-chip cache.

It avers that the key benefits include:

• Up to six-core operation (up to 12 threads per socket with Hyper Threading)
• Turbo/Hyper-Thread enabled
• 12MB L3 CPU cache
• 3 channels of DDR3 memory
• DDR3L support
• Intel Turbo Boost optimization
• VT performance improvements

The company explains that the Westmere series is produced using Intel's next-generation, 32nm manufacturing technology, allowing smaller form factors. More can be included on each chip; multi-chip packages include multiple CPU cores as well as an integrated graphics processor. It claims that such high-level integration delivers better graphics and processing performance while consuming less power. The company adds that Westmere also utilizes Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a new instruction set for faster data encryption and decryption.

The company says that it will offer four Westmere servers with single processor or dual processor configurations:

• E5620 - 8 x 2.40GHz - single processor $409/month - dual processor $459/month
• E5640 - 8 x 2.66GHZ - single processor $449/month - dual processor $499/month
• X5650 - 12 x 2.66GHz - single processor $549/month - dual processor $599/month
• X5670 - 12 x 2.93GHz - single processor $649/month - dual processor $699/month

"Our customers deserve the best, and we strive to offer the latest, greatest technology. We're proud our customers can be first to leverage the new Westmere chips," said Nathan Day, SoftLayer Chief Technology Officer. "Westmere produces tangible, bottom-line benefits that any system administrator will notice, like improved total system performance with faster CPU communication between system components or other CPUs inside the server environment."