Intel expands Xeon processor family for professional creators

Intel has announced the expansion of its Xeon workstation processor family with the new Xeon W-3500 and Xeon W-2500 desktop workstation processors. These new additions aim to meet the growing demands for power and reliability that professional creators, researchers, engineers, and software developers require, particularly those involved in AI machine learning.

The Xeon W-3500 and Xeon W-2500 processors offer an expanded compute architecture with up to 60 performance cores and 120 threads of compute power. They deliver up to 10% higher multithreaded performance compared to previous generations.

"For nearly 20 years, the Intel architecture has been the workstation of choice for software developers, scientists, creatives, and engineers," said Roger Chandler, vice president and general manager of Enthusiast PC and Workstation Solutions in the Client Computing Group at Intel. "Any improvement we make to the platform accelerates their ability to change the world. Today, we’re excited to roll out our latest workstation products, the Intel Xeon W-3500 and Intel Xeon W-2500 processors, to meet the demanding compute needs of professional innovators around the globe."

The Xeon W-3500 processor stack provides up to 60 performance cores and 120 threads, adding four to eight more cores than the equivalent W-3400 lineup. It delivers up to 10% higher multithreaded performance generation-over-generation. The Xeon W-2500 processor stack features up to 26 performance cores and 52 threads, adding two more cores across the stack versus the W-2400 lineup, and providing up to 11% higher multithreaded performance generation-over-generation.

These new processors also introduce several platform features including up to 4.8 gigahertz turbo frequency on both the W-3500 and W-2500 workstation processors, an increase of L3 cache with up to 112.5 megabytes for the w9-3595X model and 48.75 megabytes for the w7-2595X model, and support for up to 4 terabytes of memory capacity. The new processors also continue to support ECC memory and RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability) technologies for improved data integrity and system reliability.

Additional platform features include up to 112 CPU PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes on the Xeon W-3500 processors and up to 64 CPU PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes on the Xeon W-2500 processors, third-generation Intel Deep Learning Boost for improved AI training and inferencing, and Intel vPro Enterprise technologies for hardware-enhanced security features and easy system deployment into enterprise environments.

The Xeon W-3500 and Xeon W-2500 processors are expected to be available for order from industry partners including HP, Dell, and Lenovo, with system availability beginning in September. The recommended customer price for the Intel Xeon W processor family starts at USD $609 for the Xeon w3-2525 and scales to USD $5,889 for the Xeon w9-3595X.