Several vendors were showing LGA 1155 socket boards. These entry-level server boards can use one Sandy Bridge CPU and feature a maximum of 4 DIMM slots.

The Xeon everybody is waiting for is of course the successor to Westmere: the Xeon E-5. Quite a few details have already been disclosed on the web (see here and here), and indeed the octal-core "Romley Xeon" is a pretty impressive chip. Although this CPU is scheduled to be launched in Q4, quite a few server vendors were already showcasing tens of different motherboards for this CPU.

The new Xeon will feature a massive memory subsystem: four channels will be able to drive up to 1600 MHz DDR3 DIMMs.  The new Xeons will be able to use DDR3 Load Reduced Dual-Inline Memory Modules, which enables 32 GB DIMMs.

Last but not least, CAT 7 cable is becoming mainstream as even super slim flat cables are available.

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  • Gami - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    Damn, I wish I was Limited to 1 TB of RAM right now.
  • AlExAkE - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link

    hahaha u wish u had such a problem hah? :) xxaxa I'd take my 4GB to the corner and stay there without saying anything...
  • vol7ron - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link

    I can hardly imagine what you would need that much RAM in a PC for. Servers I understand, PCs not so much.
  • Gami - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link

    for VM Hosts servers,
    after getting pass the first problem of storage space...

    the next problem is normally not enough Real Memory.
    4 CPUs with 24 Cores in total, can handle a lot of VMs, but you normally run out of storage space first (which can actually be resolved), but Memory, you've basically hit a Brick wall..
  • vbrisebo - Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - link

    Companies like V3sys.com use the Fusion-io cards to break past those barriers. They can run 50 to 100 VM's on one server as the Fusion-io card can serve as both storage and RAM for the VMs.
  • oneoho - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link

    werd, 1TB of ram? holy shiet think of the VMs!
  • Griswold - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    You spent only a few hours at the largest IT fair there is and come to the conclusion its becoming less international every year just because the few booths you visited mostly presented you with german material?

    Did you go there during the press days or public opening?
  • JMC2000 - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    "The HTX slot offers a low latency 6.4 GB/s interface. Together with these kind of "NUMA connected" cards, it is easier to build a very low latency HPC cluster.

    However, it seems that the HTX slot is at the end of its lifetime. The upcoming Xeons seem to come with a PCI-express 3.0 controller integrated, so they should be able to offer a low latency interface of up to 12.8 GB/s, or twice as much."

    I was just looking at the HTX specs/whitepapers, and HTX 3.0 has an aggregate bandwidth of 20.8GB/sec or 10.4GB/sec in each direction. Are you sure it is just a HTX 1.0/2.0 slot or is it HTX 3.0? All 6000-series Opterons support up to 3.2GHz or 6.4GT/s.
  • mino - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    Plus a lower latency on top of it.

    PCIe is not really a HTX competitor. That hypothetical QPI slot is.
  • MySchizoBuddy - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    When will we see Tegra 2 based Server.

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