For months, there have been rumors circulating of a new Intel 15-core CPU, with a particular focus on Big Data analytics, multi-socket systems, and the enterprise market. Well, this past January, we took a trip to Intel's SAP research lab to see the new processors and the rather substantial update coming down the pipe.

Unlike Intel's mainstream and basic server products, the truly Big Iron hardware updates on a significantly slower cadence. Haswell chips launched eight months ago for desktop and the Xeon E5 v2 family, based on Ivy Bridge, has been available for months -- but the Xeon E7 processors Intel is replacing today are still based on the old Westmere core, which first debuted in consumer products back in 2010...