Intel released the latest in its Xeon family of processors today that boasts increased performance of up to 80%, new vector extensions for compute intensive applications and the first integrated I/O actually baked into the processor itself.

This is Intel’s new micro architecture on the Sandy Bridge CPUs. The news has far reaching implications as the need grows for far more powerful processors to power the billions and soon trillions of devices that connect everyone and everything.

It’s also one of the most significant technology advancements for the entire IT landscape. HP Gen8 and Dell’s new 12G server line leverages the new Intel processors as does new networking technology from a host of providers.

Intel claims the following about the new chips:

• 80% performance boost.
• Integrated I/O technology with PCI Express 3.0 Support.
• Supports up to 768 gigabytes of memory.
• Up to double the number of floating points for compute intensive applications.
• Adaptive technology that provides performance boosts when needed with its turbo boost technology.
• Allows system memory to lay in low power state. Latency reduced due to unneeded trips to memory.
• Tracking power usage directly from the server.
• Two security features: Hardware-based encryption/decryption.

It’s the I/O integration that is of particular interest. Latency is now becoming the big issue for IT. It’s the lag that costs money. Applications that take too long to process mean more CPU cycles getting expended. Intel is banking that its new I/O integration will be a big seller and convincing upside for customers upgrading to new servers.

Services Angle

But every upgrade has its implications. I talked with the founders of Cloudflare a few weeks ago. The company masks DNS addresses to provide an outer data security layer against attacks. It has six times more traffic than Twitter. The company is using the new Intel Xeon processors for its workloads but had to rewrite its applications in order to get them to work on the new platform.

That points to the challenges service providers will face. Intel’s new chips are incredibly powerful but there are always huge upgrade considerations.

In a post last week, Wikibon’s Stuart Miniman does an excellent job of laying out those challenges for customers considering upgrading to 10GbE networking. The servers are one thing but the impacts on such issues as cabling become an issue that also requires considerable investment.