Intel has released some new details of its upcoming processor range to the press, including its new Xeon 7400, previously known as Dunnington.
Based on the forthcoming Nehalem core architecture, the new CPUs are targetting the virtualisation and communications markets, claiming a 40% performance in Hyper-V performance in VMWare tests.

The benefits of virtualisation - running multiple operating systems on one server - are well understood. It's reckoned that a single application server is idle 90% of the time, and doubling up usage can reduce the hardware footprint and increase power efficiency. At the moment, though, many IT managers are reluctant to virtualise business critical applications like VoIP and unified communications, citing reliability and performance concerns.

"The vision is that we'd like to see more business critical apps running virtualised," the Chief Architect for Nehalem, Ronak Singhal, told Comms Dealer. "The potential is obviously there and if it can't be I'd like to know what problems there are."

The new processor family also includes significant improvements to instruction sets for handling multimedia. Intel claims that these will enable high definition video conferencing using the H.264 codec on laptops.