Intel's next-gen 32C/64T chip teased has 100G OmniPath

We've been hearing rumors of AMD competing in the HEDT space with a monster 32C/64T processor, possibly based on its Naples platform, but now we're hearing more information on Intel's next-gen Xeon E5-2699 v5 processor.

Intel's new Xeon E5-2699 v5 will be based on Skylake-EP, with 32 physical CPU cores, and 64 threads thanks to SMT/Hyper-Threading. Performance wise, expect it to be an absolute monster - with some new technologies being baked into it from Intel.

Skylake-EX Purley should ship with 6-channel DDR4 support, compared to 4-channel DDR support - with the AVX-512 instruction set, and exciting new 100G OmniPath interconnect technology.

100G OmniPath is a huge deal, as Intel's next-gen 100Gbps networking fabric technology takes things to the next level. We're looking at 100Gbps per port, with 25GB/sec bandwidth (bi-directional), and the Prairie River switch silicon provides switches with teh ability of hitting 48 ports, with up to 9.6TBps of bandwidth (1200GB/sec, or 1.2TB/sec).

There were even engineering samples that reportedly made it online last year, selling for $3845 - quite a steep price, but 64-threaded CPU? Yes, please. The base clock on the higher-end Xeon CPUs is always lower than the consumer-orientated Core family processors, with the monster 32C/64T chip to sport a 2GHz (or so) base clock.

We should see Intel deploy a new socket for these next-gen Xeon parts, with LGA 3467 sure to make an appearance - with support for 12 DDR4 DIMMs... as well as the fresh out of the oven Optane DIMMs, which we've just written about here.