Eat your heart out, quad-cores, Intel just dropped a 22-core CPU on us. Boom
The CPU’s 22 count is made up of Broadwell cores, which when combined with Hyper-Threading, amounts to no fewer than 44-threads in a single-socket computer. On a dual-socket machine, you’re looking at 88 threads in a workstation. Yes, cue Johnny Dangerously joke here.
The new Xeon E5-2600 V4 hasn’t shown up on Intel’s ARK product list yet, but it’s likely to slot into an LGA-2011 V3 socket, with, presumably, the same quad-channel memory.
OK, so you’re thinking this doesn’t apply to you, Jane or Joe Consumer. But high-core-count Xeons have historically found their way into all kinds of consumer machines.
The Falcon Northwest Tiki I reviewed last year, in fact, featured a Xeon part in an Xbox-sized form factor. The Tiki’s Xeon, however, had a piddling 18 cores, based on Haswell.
Xeons are also relevant to the prosumer crowd. Apple’s MacPro line, for instance, has long offered core-laden Xeons, as have Boxx’s workstations.
Why this matters, or not: Does the average consumer really need 22 cores No. In fact, most people don't even need a quad-core machine. That’s starting to change as DirectX 12 games lean more heavily on cores, but even still, you can simply appreciate this for what it is: an awesome amount of compute cores packed into a CPU.