MacRumors.com

Intel released 16 of their new Penryn Core 2 Extreme and Xeon processors today. The new chips incorporate the new "Hi-k" metal gate formula and also incorporate a smaller 45-nanometer manufacturing process. These changes deliver faster and more energy-efficient processors.

While they did introduce a Core 2 Extreme Qx9750 quad-core processor with SSE4, our attention has focused on Intel's new Xeon processors, which makes up the bulk of Intel's announcements today.

New to the Intel line-up of server processors are 15 server dual-core and quad-core 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors. The 12 new quad-core chips boast clock speeds ranging from 2GHz up to 3.20GHz, with front side bus speeds (FSB) up to 1600MHz, and cache sizes of 12MB. The three new dual-core chips feature clock speeds of up to 3.40GHz, an FSB of up to 1600MHz, and cache sizes of 6MB.

The new 5400 Xeon chips are compatible with existing Xeon platforms and sets a number of benchmark world records, according to Intel. More data is available at Intel's site.

Apple has been rumored to be buying up the high end 3.2GHz Penryn Xeon processors which feature a faster 1600MHz bus and 12MB of L2 cache for an upcoming Mac Pro revision. Apple currently uses the 5100 Xeon Woodcrest (Quad core Macs) or 5300 Xeon Clovertown (8-core Macs) processors.