Intel released their next generation of Xeon CPUs today:
New to the Intel line-up of server processors are 15 server dual-core and quad-core 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors. The 12 new quad-core chips boast clock speeds ranging from 2GHz up to 3.20GHz, with front side bus speeds (FSB) up to 1600MHz, and cache sizes of 12MB. The three new dual-core chips feature clock speeds of up to 3.40GHz, an FSB of up to 1600MHz, and cache sizes of 6MB.
The 5400 series looks very attractive for smaller virtualization environments. Not only can you continue to get eight cores in a 1U or 2U server but with the addition of FlexMigration the CPUs are VMotion-compatible with older CPUs. This means I can take my Xeon 5355-based clusters and extend them with new machines based on these CPUs.
Support for FlexMigration isn’t in VMware Virtual Infrastructure yet, but with Intel and VMware both saying they’ve been working on adding it I wouldn’t be surprised to see it soon.
There is a lot of good information in both the announcement and the 5400 series product brief.