Intel Develops New Interconnect for Xeon, Atom

Intel is working on a new interconnect architecture designed to work with all of the company's volume server technologies.

According to an article published by the EETimes, the company aims the technology at everything from Atom microservers to HPC environments with Xeon Phi coprocessors.

There are no details available, as Intel's Raj Hazra said that roadmap planning has not been completed yet. This may indicate that this technology is very much in the development phase and may not be available for some time.

However, Hazra said that it is not an "end of the decade" product and will be available sooner, but it is clear that this is the fabric that Intel will be using for most of its servers. Hazra hinted that the technology will be part of exascale computers, which are generally expected to become available in the early 2020s. It is unclear whether Itanium will get this interconnect as well.

EETimes reminded us that Intel has made several acquisitions that could be key to make this interconnect a reality, including an interconnect team from Cray, QLogic's Infiniband chip business and semiconductor company Fulcrum.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

See here for all of Wolfgang's Tom's IT Pro articles.

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