Intel Ivy Bridge–based Xeon microprocessors

Intel Ivy Bridge–based Xeon microprocessors (also known as Ivy Bridge-E) is the follow-up to Sandy Bridge-E, using the same CPU core as the Ivy Bridge processor, but in LGA 2011, LGA 1356 and LGA 2011-1 packages for workstations and servers.

There are five different families of Xeon processors that were based on Sandy Bridge architecture:

  • Ivy Bridge-E uses LGA 2011 socket and was branded as Core i7 Extreme Edition and Core i7 high-end desktop (HEDT) processors, despite sharing many similarities with Xeon E5 models.
  • Ivy Bridge-EP which also uses LGA 2011 socket for the Xeon E5 models aimed at high-end servers and workstations. It supports up to 4 socket motherboards.
  • Ivy Bridge-EX introduces new LGA 2011-1 socket and features up to 15 cores. It supports up to eight socket motherboards.
  • Ivy Bridge-EN uses a smaller LGA 1356 socket for low-end and dual-processor servers on certain Xeon E5 and Pentium branded models.
  • Ivy Bridge Xeon with LGA 1155 socket were mostly identical to its desktop counterparts apart from the missing IGPU despite branded as Xeon processors.
  • Gladden was offered in BGA 1284 package for embedded applications.

Features

  • Dual memory controllers for Ivy Bridge-EP and Ivy Bridge-EX
  • Up to 12 CPU cores and 30 MB of L3 cache for Ivy Bridge-EP
  • Up to 15 CPU cores and 37.5 MB L3 cache for Ivy Bridge-EX (released on February 18, 2014 as Xeon E7 v2)
  • Thermal design power between 50 W and 155 W
  • Support for up to eight DIMMs of DDR3-1866 memory per socket, with reductions in memory speed depending on the number of DIMMs per channel
  • No integrated GPU
  • Ivy Bridge-EP introduced new hardware support for interrupt virtualization, branded as APICv.

Models and steppings

The basic Ivy Bridge-E is a single-socket processor sold as Core i7-49xx and is only available in the six-core S1 stepping, with some versions limited to four active cores.

There are in fact three die "flavors" for the Ivy Bridge-EP, meaning that they are manufactured and organized differently, according to the number of cores an Ivy Bridge-EP CPU includes:

  • The largest is an up-to-12-core die organized as three four-core columns with up to 30 MB L3 cache in two banks between the cores; these cores are linked by three rings of interconnects.
  • The intermediate is an up-to-10-core die organized as two five-core columns with up to 25 MB L3 cache in a single bank between the cores; the cores are linked by two rings of interconnects.
  • The smallest is an up-to-six-core die organized as two three-core columns with up to 15 MB L3 cache in a single bank between the cores; the cores are linked by two rings of interconnects.

Ivy Bridge-EX has up to 15 cores and scales to 8 sockets. The 15-core die is organized into three columns of five cores, with three interconnect rings connecting two columns per ring; each five-core column has a separate L3 cache.

Ivy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-EP

Ivy Bridge EX

Ivy Bridge EN

Ivy Bridge Xeon

Gladden

References

Uses material from the Wikipedia article Intel Ivy Bridge–based Xeon microprocessors, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.