Intel Launches the Xeon D-1600 Family: Upgrades to Xeon D-1500

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Even if you’ve been keeping track of Intel’s Xeon family lines, the Xeon D family could probably give you cause for confusion. The same ‘generation’ of products spans a wide range of processors, from the dense ECC-enabled server all the way through to a big bustling cryptography and a network acceleration chip, when in actual fact each of these products is built on different internal microarchitectures. Today Intel is at it again, with the new Xeon D-1600 family.

These new Xeon D-1600 processors build upon the Xeon D-1500 line of products, offering up to eight CPU cores. The new chips are primarily focused on edge network, mid-range storage, and space-constrained solutions. This includes control planes, routers, firewalls, base stations, localized cloud infrastructure, and others – the Xeon D chips enable this by bundling the chipset on board, and enabling multiple high gigabit Ethernet options and/or Quick-Assist Technology for cryptography acceleration.

Intel’s product portfolio here designates two potential upgrades from current Xeon D-1500 users: for an absolute throughput upgrade, then look to Xeon D-2100, which offers up to 16 cores and 512 GB of DRAM. However for a per-core performance upgrade, then the Xeon D-1600 processors will fit the bill, with a doubling of memory support and increased frequencies. In fact, the Xeon D-1600 processors are built on the same Broadwell microarchitecture as the Xeon D-1500, but take advantage of manufacturing improvements for increased frequencies at the same power as well as the new 16 Gb memory chips for doubled DRAM capacity. As with the D-1500, models are on offer with extended temperature support.

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