Intel's Woodcrest processor previewed
The Bensley server platform debuts
IF YOU FOLLOW server and workstation processors at all, you probably have a sense that Intel's Xeon has been having some trouble competing with AMD's Opteron. Intel is looking to reverse its fortunes in the server and workstation markets with a series of new products designed to take on the Opteron and win. The first wave of those products is being introduced today in the form of a new server platform, code-named Bensley. This platform consists primarily of a new chipset that will be mated with a trio of new Xeon processors, also scheduled to arrive in stages.
The Bensley server platform debuts
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The star of that lineup, once it arrives, will be the Woodcrest microprocessor based on Intel's new Core microarchitecture, which promises higher performance and lower power consumption than current Netburst-derived Xeons. I recently attended a reviewer's workshop in Portland, Oregon where I got to spend some quality time with a pair of Woodcrest processors on the Bensley platform, and I came away impressed. More importantly, I came away with some benchmark scores we can compare directly to AMD's Opteron 285.
