Intel is planning a server-oriented version of its 32 nanometer Xeons that would be the company's first chip of any kind with more than eight cores, Intel said in a webcast late Thursday. Currently codenamed Westmere-EX, it would supplant the eight-core, 45nm Xeon 7500 and is likely to pack 12 cores without increasing the power consumption over the current chip. It should still work in existing processor sockets and would be a drop-in replacement for those who want to upgrade servers rather than replace them outright.
