Tigerton, Intel's next iteration of the Xeon, has been in the works for some time. It promises to bring the ability to put high numbers of cores into a confined space, with 4-way processors with up to 4 cores each. It is succeeding the existing Whitefield line, and could potentially make systems with 16 cores easy to construct.

Intel has aimed for the release of Tigerton in the second half of this year, and now it looks like they will be aiming for an October release. On the schedule are 8 different processors, most with 4 cores each. The speeds range from 1.6GHz with four cores to 2.93GHz with four cores and up to 8MB of L2 cache.

There will be 2 dual-core models at significantly lower price points than the higher end quad-core models, but none of these CPUs will be labeled as “cheap”. The Xeon X7350, fastest of the bunch, will run at $2,301 if bought in quantities of 1000. Ouch! But, these are definitely aimed at mini supercomputers. A system with four quad-core Xeons has some serious horsepower behind it.