Intel launched 6-core Dunnington processors

Intel has just launched their 6-core Dunnington a.k.a. Xeon 7400 processor, which is designed to dramatically improve the performance of virtualization applications, and comes with Flex Migration and VTD technology.

This new processor is Intel's first to use a dedicated level-3 cache, and able to boost performance by 50 percent compared to the 4-core Tigerton a.k.a. Xeon 7300 processor. All its 6 processing cores are placed on the same piece of silicon, which is different from the older 4-core Xeon processors that were created by tying two 2-core silicon packages together.

The Dunnington is socket-compatible with the Tigerton, and both of them are designed to be used in machines with four or more processor sockets. In fact, you can plug the new Dunningtons into the same sockets for Tigerton, and use a BIOS patch to upgrade the system to support the new processors. There are also optionally scaled down 4-core version of Dunnington processor with a cheaper price tag.

If you are dealing with virtualization and high performance computing, this will be a very good news for you.