Intel continues to react to the increased threat in teh CPU market from AMD, announcing new Xeon W processors at the IFA trade show in Berlin, Germany. Intel's new processors are a step up from the current flock of Xeon processors, using the LGA 2066 socket and rocking the Skylake-SP architecture.
Intel's new Xeon W processors come in 8/10/18-core variants, with Turbo Boost technology that drives the CPU clock speeds up to 4.5GHz. We have 48 x PCIe 3.0 lanes available, with the Xeon W processors capable of taking 512GB of DDR4-2666 ECC RAM.
The new flagship Intel Xeon W-2195 processor is the beasty 18C/36T chip @ 4.3GHz (Turbo Boost 2.0), joined by 24.75MB of L3 cache, quad-channel DDR4-2666 support, a 140W TDP, and 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes available. Pricing hasn't been stated just yet, but it should be expensive considering the Xeon W-2155 is a 10C/20T variant priced at a hefty $1440. I think we'll see the Xeon W-2195 at way over $2000, and most likely close to $3000.
Intel says that their new Xeon W processors have a 1.87x performance increase over the previous-gen 4-year-old workstation CPUs in the Xeon E5-1680 v2 Romley processor. The new 18C/36T variant will drop sometime in Q4 2017, with the new iMac Pro from Apple to rock it later this year.