Intel Launches Xeon E5-1600 V4; Workstation Makers Incorporate New Intel Processors

This week, following Intel’s announcement of the new Intel Xeon E5-1600 V4 processors, HP alerted the media with the pending arrival of workstations powered by new Intel CPUs.

Beginning June 13, HP Z440 and Z640 will be available with the new Xeon E5-1600 V4 products.

Ron Rogers, HP’s VP and head of engineering for workstations and thin clients, says, “Today’s workforce is demanding top-of-the-line technology tools to meet the needs of professionals in power hungry industries, such as engineering, architecture and creative industries. Part of our commitment to professionals is to provide our customers with exceptional technology that’s early to market ...”

According to Intel, Lenovo, Dell, Fujitsu, Inspur, and Supermicro are also expected to release their own Xeon E5-1600 V4-powered products.

The Xeon E5 processors are part of Intel’s product line based on its Broadwell microarchitecture. They target the professional market. The gaming, digital content creation, and consumer PC markets are served by the Intel Core i processors.

Xeon E5-1600 series is part of Intel’s offerings for the workstation market. Xeon E5-2600 series, on the other hand, targets the data center and high performance computing (HPC) markets.

The Xeon E5-1600 V4 lineup features:

• Intel Turboboost Max Technology 3.0;
• Intel vPro hardware-based security features;
• 8 cores/16 threads architecture with up to 20M L3 cache;
• up to 2400MHz max memory speed with DDR4 (vs 2133MHz);
• support for up to 3TB of memory in a single workstation system with new high throughput 3DS LRDIMMs.

Ricky Branner, Intel’s director of workstation business solutions, writes, “With [Turboboost] enabled, the foreground application (or any application the user chooses) gets an extra boost of performance—up to 200MHz—by getting up to two cores running in Turbo Boost dedicated to it. For example, if you have an 8-core processor, two of the 8 cores will run at up to 4GHz and be dedicated to that application”

Branner points out that the Turboboost feature will make a difference in “CAD and content creation applications that perform better when you increase the processor frequency.”

Intel E5-1600 V4 processors do not come with integrated graphics like the E3-1200 V5 line (integrated with Intel HD Graphics) and the E3-1600M V5 line (integrated with Intel Iris Pro Graphics). For those running engineering and design software that demand graphics-intensive computing, OEMs usually offer professional graphics hardware in their workstations.

Both HP Z440 and Z640 offer configuration options with professional GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA.