Today the Intel Xeon D processor family expanded from two processors to ten. We hinted that this would happen for most of 2015, but today is the official launch day. We have the new SKUs intended for embedded, storage and networking applications. Intel also announced it will be delivering the 16 core variant in Q1 2016. We have additional detail on storage optimized SKUs and networking optimized SKUs to check out as well.

Intel Xeon D-1500 Q4 2015 Products

In March, Intel released two Intel Xeon D-1500 series processors, the Xeon D-1540 and D-1520. STH was the first site to bring you independent Intel Xeon D-1540 benchmarks and again the first to bring Intel Xeon D-1520 benchmarks. These processors were intended for scale out general purpose applications (e.g. Facebook nodes.)

The newest processors are intended more for embedded applications such as storage and high density servers. These are applications like NetApp, Synology, QNAP and other storage controllers, HP Moonshot nodes and Supermicro microblades.

Intel also formally released that it will have 16 core CPUs in production by Q1 2016.

Just to give one an idea of how small these are: here is a chip being held. Much smaller than the typical Xeon E5 package!

More to come but for general purpose servers, the Xeon D-1540 and D-1520 will still be highly relevant. For high-density and embedded applications, the new processors will likely be a game changer. We have reported previously that these SoCs were in extremely high demand.

Here is a list of partners and industry segments. We already highlighted the new ASRock Rack storage board we hope to review soon:

Exciting times for the Intel SoC line-up and this certainly puts additional pressure on the ARM vendors. Intel is announcing and releasing generations of products before many ARM vendors are able to produce silicon.