Rumor has it that
Intel's highest offering in the Ivy Bridge-EX lineup will come packed with a generous 15 processing cores. Alongside that, the CPU will carry 30MB of L3 Cache and will be based on the Brickland platform. Within Intel's previous offerings, its chip with the highest core count ran up to 10 processing cores on its flagship Westmere-EX CPU.
The new Brickland based server CPUs will be split up into two series: The Ivy Bridge-EX 'Xeon E7' parts, and the Ivy Bridge-EP 'Xeon E5' parts. While the EP lineup will pack from 6 - 10 cores, the EX lineup will start at 10 cores and come packed with up to 15 cores. The latter lineup will include the E7-8800 V2, E7-4800 V2, E7-2800 V2 parts. The EP lineup will include the E5-4600 V2 chip.
The new EX CPUs will also be able to support ECC DDR3-1600 and DDR4-2133/2400/3200 memory. No, your eyes are not mistaken, DDR4 might finally start to see daylight.
If high end server hardware doesn't interest you, the following might:
Intel has announced that its Ivy Bridge-E HEDT (High End Desktop) lineup may benefit from a higher core count, indicating that entry level CPUs will feature at least 6 cores, and higher end models might feature up to 8 or 10 processing cores. It is rumored that the Sandy Bridge-E i7 3980X might hit shelves not too far from now, which may become Intel's first native 8 core desktop CPU.
