Intel’s New Xeon E5-2600 CPUs Power Boston’s 64 Core 2U Quatro Server

Now that Intel’s Xeon E5-series processors are finally out, Boston, one of the largest resellers and partners of SuperMicro, has announced the new Quattro 1264-T server which can pack no less than 64 processor cores inside its 2U chassis.

In order to build such a high-density solution, Boston went with SuperMicro’s 2U Twin^2 barebone server.

This integrates four dual-socket motherboards inside a compact 2U chassis which, when combined with Intel’s new octo-core Xeon E5-2600 server processors can deliver a total of 64 CPU cores. 

Each one of the four motherboards installed is equipped with eight DIMM sockets (four for each CPU) and, according to SuperMicro, can support as much as 256GB of memory when populated with 32GB DDR3 modules.

Boston enables its customers to pair these servers with various Intel Xeon E5 processors, topping out with the eight-core E5-2670 working at 2.6GHz (3.3GHz in Turbo mode).

Storage wise, the Quattro 1264-T server can be configured to feature as much as 12 Toshiba –built 2TB 7200rpm SAS hard drives, while for expansion purposes the servers are equipped with four PCI Express x16 Gen 3.0 slots. 

For networking duties, Boston went with four of Intel’s i350 controller, which provide two Gigabit Ethernet ports each, as well as with quad Mellanox Connect-X3 FDR Infiniband adapters, according to AnandTech.

All these are powered by dual redundant PSUs that can deliver a maximum of 1650 Watts. The operating system of choice is Windows 2008 R2 Standard x64.

The pricing of the Quattro 1264-T 2U server starts at approximately £20,000 (about $31,363). So far, Dell is the only other company that announced a similar quad-motherboard solution, the PowerEdge C6220, but no pricing info has been released yet.

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