The power-oriented desktop Xeon processor family is beginning to see some of the improvements implemented in the “Haswell” series of fourth-generation Intel Core processors. A new Xeon E3-1284L has been spotted, introducing Intel’s Iris Pro 5200 graphical chipset into the processor.
The new processor was spotted by AnandTech. It is a ball-grid array processor like those used in laptops and Apple’s iMac. The processor is a quad-core model with eight threads, and a clock speed of 1.8GHz. Under peak “turbo” load, the processor will run up to 3.2GHz. As with the rest of the Xeon line, ECC memory up to 32GB DDR3-1600 is supported. The Iris Pro 5200 implementation in the E3-1284L has the highest base speed at 750MHz, but the lowest peak speed at 1GHz.
Intel enthusiasts expect that this new model will be released in the first quarter of 2014. Products with the chip embedded aren’t likely to see market until the latter part of the year. AnandTech suspects that “It could turn out that this SKU is just a specific customer’s request” but also notes that “it would seem a little odd just to have one processor of this nature in the Xeon line-up.”
