Intel plans Westmere release during Q1

During its quarterly earnings call Thursday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that new Xeon server processors, based on the Westmere architecture, would be released during the current calendar quarter. Using a 32 nanometer process, Intel will refresh its line of Xeon multi-core server processors. Based on the Nehalem design, Westmere will have better performance and power consumption characteristics due to the higher density gained from the manufacturing process. Westmere also supports an enhanced instruction set for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for rapid encryption and decryption of data. The architecture also allows shutting down unused cores in order to save power.