Click to enlarge

courtesy: www.aurorawdc.com

The range includes three low-voltage versions, and Intel is claiming they have "the lowest watts-per-core usage of any device in their category", according to a report in the EE Times.

The news should be a shock for AMD, who is trailing Intel at not only the 45nm level, its rival six-core server processor, (code-named Istanbul), isn't expected to be released for anywhere up to 12 months.

The new Xeon series chips have up to 16MB of shared L3 cache, come in both quad-core and six-core flavors, feature 45nm process technology and include a low-voltage 50W version for blade configurations.

Intel has not yet announced when it might release the new six-core chips for desktops and laptops.