In 1998 Intel started including the name “Xeon” to label their processors targeted to the server and workstation market. These processors can access more RAM memory, can work on a multi-processing environment (i.e., motherboards with more than one CPU installed) and have a performance higher than their counterpart targeted to the end-user market.

The server and workstation versions of Pentium II and Pentium III were called Pentium II Xeon and Pentium III Xeon, respectively. So, while Pentium II and Pentium III were targeted to end users, Pentium II Xeon and Pentium III Xeon were targeted to servers and workstations.

With Pentium 4, Intel decided to call its server version as “Xeon” instead of “Pentium 4 Xeon.”

In the table below you can see the Intel CPUs targeted to end users and their counterparts targeted to the server and workstation market.

In this tutorial we will present the main technical features of all Xeon models released to date (Pentium II Xeon, Pentium III Xeon, Xeon and Xeon MP).