As communication service providers, enterprise IT, and cloud service providers seek to speed new service delivery and handle exponential growth in the number of users accessing their services, it is essential that they optimize infrastructure for density and cost, both in the data center and at the network edge. Inefficient data center scaling drives up space and cost, and increases environmental impact, while fixed function, proprietary devices at the network edge hinder the ability of IT to rapidly deploy and manage new services. Intel® Xeon® D processors offer options for infrastructure optimization, by bringing the performance and advanced intelligence of Intel® Xeon® processors into dense, lower-power system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. They can be deployed for a variety of workloads - from the data center to the intelligent edge - in network solutions, wireless base stations, mid-range storage solutions, industrial Internet of Things (IoT), dynamic web serving, dense/rugged environments outside the data center, and more. And they can run the same instruction set as more robust Intel® Xeon® processors to provide software consistency from the data center to the network edge.
Extending Intelligence to the Network Edge
As network traffic volume and complexity increases, operators must both optimize their infrastructure and increase value-added services to drive revenue. This requires more compute capability at all points of the network including the edge. These highly scalable, compact, and energy efficient SoCs are an ideal solution for equipment makers seeking attractive performance per watt. The high level of integration including up to four integrated 10 Gb Ethernet ports, Intel® QAT and support for hardware-assisted virtualization makes this class of Intel® Xeon® D processors an attractive option for wireless base stations, routers and switches, security and network appliances, and for the build-out of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
New Intel® Xeon® D-1600 Processors
Intel® Xeon® D-1600 processors offer new levels of workload-optimized support for both mid-range storage and network solutions. This customer-oriented and highly-optimized design offers up to a 1.5X improvement in base frequency compared to the previous generation of Intel® Xeon® D-1500 processors, network series. Combined with the advanced capability integration of up to 40 Gbps with Intel® Ethernet and up to 30 Gbps of cryptography/compress/decompress offload with Intel® QAT, the new Intel® Xeon® D-1600 processor delivers new levels of performance for dense computing environments. These new processors offer an effective upgrade path for solutions already using the Intel® Xeon® D-1500 processor - both the standard and network series. However, the network series offers the easiest migration path because of BGA package pin compatibility with the Intel® Xeon® D-1600 processor.
Intel® Xeon® D-1500 Processors
Intel® Xeon® D-1500 processors - both standard and network series - address other low-power, high-density infrastructure needs, including those with higher floating point performance workload requirements, while offering additional product options with industrial extended temperature support. Available with up to 16 cores and 128 GB of addressable memory, Intel® Xeon® D-1500 processors have an integrated platform controller hub (PCH), integrated I/O, integrated 10 Gigabit Intel® Ethernet ports, and a thermal design point (TDP) of 20 watts to 65 watts.
Intelligent, High-Efficiency Storage for the Data Center and Beyond
With Intel® Platform Storage Extensions, Intel® Xeon® D processors offer new intelligence for dense, low-power storage solutions that can be deployed in or out of the data center. Non-transparent bridging (NTB) enables high-speed connectivity among Intel® Xeon® processor-based platforms for failover support; Asynchronous DRAM Self- Refresh (ADR) helps to protect data in the event of a power outage; and Intel® QuickData Technology offloads memory accesses to the SoC for fast data movement with low processor overhead.
Ideal for Lightweight Hyperscale Workloads
Intel® Xeon® D processors provide excellent performance and software compatibility in a low-power SoC, for microservers that can efficiently process lightweight, hyperscale workloads in cloud service provider data centers and in dedicated hosting company data centers. These SoCs offer exceptional node performance, up to 12 MB of last level cache, and support for up to 128 Gigabytes of high-speed DDR4 memory, and are ideal for emerging lightweight hyper-scale workloads, including memory caching, dynamic web serving, and dedicated hosting.