News

Intel Launches 2 GHz Xeon for Workstations

• By Scott Bekker
• 09/25/2001

"We expect to see greater than 10 percent performance improvement associated with that" on certain workstation applications, said Shannon Poulin, enterprise marketing manager for Intel.

Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM and NEC were expected to begin shipping workstations based on the processor this quarter.

In 1,000-unit quantities, Intel will charge $615 for the chips, which come with 256 KB of L2 cache.

Intel dropped prices for its less speedy versions of the workstation Xeon in late August in preparation for the release of the 2 GHz Xeon. The reduced prices, in 1,000-unit quantities, are $256 for the 1.7 GHz Xeon and $183 for both the 1.5 GHz and 1.4 GHz Xeons.

The processor is built using Intel's 0.18 micron technology. Intel expects to release 0.13 micron Xeons, code-named Prestonia, in the first quarter of 2002. "We expect it to come out at greater than or equal to 2 GHz -- likely 2.2," Poulin said.

The multiprocessing server version of the Xeon processor, code-named Foster MP, is slated for a launch in the first half of 2002 at a clock speed of 1.4 GHz or greater, Poulin said. Those processors will include hyperthreading technology, which allows one processor to behave as two logical processors, and level three cache.