Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 Processor
Exhibit Type: Enterprise Hardware Specification & Architectural Dossier
•
Microarchitecture: Haswell-EP (22 nm)
•
Socket: Socket R3 (LGA 2011-v3 / FCLGA2011-3)
•
Museum Inventory: 2 Units (Verified SR1XE / C1 Stepping) Installed in HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9
•
Source Authority: TechPowerUp, Intel Ark & PassMark
•
Microarchitecture: Haswell-EP (22 nm)
•
Socket: Socket R3 (LGA 2011-v3 / FCLGA2011-3)
•
Museum Inventory: 2 Units (Verified SR1XE / C1 Stepping) Installed in HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9
•
Source Authority: TechPowerUp, Intel Ark & PassMark
1. Technical Overview & Key Specifications
| Category | Property | Specification |
|---|---|---|
| Processor Identity | Model Name | Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2698 v3 (SKU: 81903 • PassMark ID: 2368) |
| Microarchitecture | Haswell-EP (Xeon E5-2600 v3 Family) | |
| Market Segment | Server / High-End Workstation (Up to 2-socket SMP configuration) | |
| Launch Date / Status | September 8, 2014 (Q3’14 launch • MSRP $3,226 USD • End-of-Life) | |
| Part Numbers / S-Spec | SR1XE (C1 stepping • Verified Museum Inventory: 2 units in HPE DL380 Gen9) |
|
| Physical & Manufacturing | CPU Socket | Socket R3 (LGA 2011-v3 / FCLGA2011-3, 2011 contacts, FC-LGA12A package) |
| Manufacturing Process | 22 nm 3D Tri-Gate High-k Metal Gate (Intel Foundry) | |
| Transistor Count | 5.69 Billion transistors (Haswell-EP HCC monolithic die) | |
| Die Surface Area | 662 mm² (High Core Count die with 16 of 18 cores enabled) | |
| Cores & Performance | Physical Cores / Threads | 16 Cores / 32 Threads (Intel Hyper-Threading Technology) |
| Base Clock Frequency | 2.30 GHz (2300 MHz) | |
| Max Turbo Frequency | Up to 3.60 GHz (Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0) | |
| All-Core Turbo Frequency | 2.80 GHz sustained across all 16 cores simultaneously | |
| Base Clock / Multiplier | 100 MHz BCLK / 23.0× (Multiplier Locked) | |
| Bus Interconnect | Dual Intel® QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) links at 9.60 GT/s | |
| Thermal & Electrical | Thermal Design Power (TDP) | 135 W |
| Nominal Operating Voltage | 0.65 V – 1.30 V (FIVR – Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator) | |
| Thermal Specification (Tcase) | 88.0 °C | |
| Cache Hierarchy | Level 1 (L1) Cache | 64 KB per core (32 KB Data + 32 KB Instruction) • 1,024 KB (1 MB) Total |
| Level 2 (L2) Cache | 256 KB dedicated per core • 4,096 KB (4 MB) Total | |
| Level 3 (L3) Cache | 40 MB Intel® Smart Cache (shared dual-ring pool across all active cores) | |
| Memory Controller | Memory Topology | Quad-Channel DDR4 memory interface (4 discrete 64-bit channels) |
| Supported Memory Types | DDR4-1600 / DDR4-1866 / DDR4-2133 MT/s | |
| Max Capacity & Bandwidth | Up to 768 GB (RDIMM) / up to 1.5 TB (LRDIMM) • 68.3 GB/s max theoretical bandwidth | |
| Reliability & Formats | Advanced ECC, Chipkill / SDDC, RDIMM, LRDIMM, NVDIMM (Persistent Memory) | |
| PassMark Benchmarks | Average CPU Mark (Multithread) | 18,847 (Median: 19,890 across 236 low-margin samples • Tier List recorded: 18,835) |
| Single Thread Rating | 1,932 MOps/Sec | |
| Server CPU Category Rank | Rank #504 out of 1,261 Server CPUs in PassMark database (Top 8.4% multithread overall) | |
| Expansion & Graphics | PCI Express Interface | PCI-Express Revision 3.0 (Gen 3) direct CPU root complex • 40 Lanes |
| Integrated Graphics Engine | None (N/A • requires discrete GPU accelerator or host BMC video adapter) |
2. Silicon Topology & Haswell-EP Microarchitecture
Compute Die Scale
5.69B
Transistors across 662 mm² 22 nm HCC monolithic die
Physical Execution Engines
16 Cores / 32 Threads
2.30 GHz base / 2.80 GHz all-core turbo / 3.60 GHz max turbo
Shared Last Level Cache
40 MB
Smart Cache distributed across dual bi-directional ring buses
Internal Silicon Die Topology & Dual Ring Interconnect
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| INTEL XEON E5-2698 v3 SILICON TOPOLOGY (HASWELL-EP HCC 22nm DIE) |
| |
| [ RING 0 DOMAIN / NUMA NODE 0 ] [ RING 1 DOMAIN / NUMA NODE 1 ] |
| |
| +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ |
| | CORE 0 | | CORE 1 | | CORE 8 | | CORE 9 | |
| | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | |
| | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | |
| +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ |
| | | | | |
| == ring stop ============= ring stop == == ring stop ============= ring stop == |
| || | | || || | | || |
| || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || <---> || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || |
| || || TOP || || |
| || RING 0 (BIDIRECTIONAL LOOP) || BRIDGE|| RING 1 (BIDIRECTIONAL LOOP) || |
| || || || || |
| || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || <---> || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || |
| || | | || || | | || |
| == ring stop ============= ring stop == == ring stop ============= ring stop == |
| | | | | |
| +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ |
| | CORE 2 | | CORE 3 | | CORE 10 | | CORE 11 | |
| | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | |
| | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | |
| +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ |
| |
| +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ |
| | CORE 4 | | CORE 5 | | CORE 12 | | CORE 13 | |
| | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | |
| | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | |
| +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ |
| | | | | |
| == ring stop ============= ring stop == == ring stop ============= ring stop == |
| || | | || || | | || |
| || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || <---> || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || |
| || || BOTTOM|| || |
| || RING 0 (LOWER HALF) || BRIDGE|| RING 1 (LOWER HALF) || |
| || || || || |
| || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || <---> || 2.5MB L3 2.5MB L3 || |
| || | | || || | | || |
| == ring stop ============= ring stop == == ring stop ============= ring stop == |
| | | | | |
| +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ +------+------+ |
| | CORE 6 | | CORE 7 | | CORE 14 | | CORE 15 | |
| | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | | 32K+32K L1 | |
| | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | | 256K L2 | |
| +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+ |
| [2 Harvested / Disabled Die Cores] |
| |
| [ SYSTEM AGENT / CONTROLLER 0 ] [ SYSTEM AGENT / CONTROLLER 1 ] |
| - Home Agent 0 (HA0) & DDR4 Ch 0/1 - Home Agent 1 (HA1) & DDR4 Ch 2/3 |
| - QPI Link 0 (9.60 GT/s coherent link) - QPI Link 1 (9.60 GT/s coherent link) |
| - PCIe Gen3 Root Complex (40 Lanes total) - Cluster-on-Die (COD) Low-Latency Mode |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+Dual Ring Architecture & Cluster-on-Die (COD) Mode
The Haswell-EP High Core Count (HCC) silicon represents Intel’s architectural transition from single-ring buses to a segmented dual ring topology. To prevent ring traffic congestion and unmanageable cache-hop latencies across 16 active cores, the silicon is organized into two independent bi-directional ring loops connected by buffered switches at the top and bottom. Under Cluster-on-Die (COD) mode, the operating system views each socket as two distinct NUMA domains, mapping 8 physical cores, 20 MB of L3 cache, and two memory channels to each domain, significantly reducing inter-ring memory access latency.
3. Quad-Channel DDR4 Subsystem & Dual 9.60 GT/s QPI Links
Integrated Quad-Channel DDR4
- Generational Leap: Haswell-EP marks the historic enterprise debut of DDR4 memory, reducing nominal supply voltage from 1.50V (DDR3) down to 1.20V.
- Memory Channels: 4 discrete 64-bit channels integrated into two internal memory controllers (MC0 and MC1).
- Peak Bandwidth: Up to 68.3 GB/s throughput at DDR4-2133 MT/s, delivering substantial bandwidth to feed all 16 execution cores.
- Massive Capacity: Supports up to 768 GB registered RDIMMs or up to 1.5 TB with 3DS load-reduced LRDIMMs per physical processor.
- Enterprise Resilience: Advanced ECC, Single Device Data Correction (SDDC / Chipkill), Demand and Patrol Scrubbing, and Memory Online Spare support.
Dual 9.60 GT/s QPI Interconnect
- Interconnect Speed: Dual Intel® QuickPath Interconnect links operating at the maximum Haswell-EP rate of 9.60 GT/s (Gigatransfers per second).
- Theoretical Bandwidth: 38.4 GB/s theoretical bi-directional bandwidth per link, yielding an aggregate inter-socket throughput of 76.8 GB/s.
- Coherent Multi-Processing: Enables symmetric multiprocessing (2S SMP) with minimal NUMA cross-socket latency penalty.
- Home Agent Snoop Modes: Supports Early Snoop (ES), Home Snoop (HS), and Cluster-on-Die (COD) snooping protocols to optimize workload cache coherency.
4. Advanced Technologies, AVX2 / FMA3 Vector Compute & Virtualization
| Technology Category | Feature / Instruction Set | Functional Capability |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware Virtualization | Intel® VT-x | Hardware virtualization assistance with Extended Page Tables (EPT) for ultra-low hypervisor memory translation overhead |
| Intel® VT-d | Virtualization for Directed I/O (direct PCI device assignment and DMA remapping for compute GPUs, HBAs, and 10GbE NICs) | |
| Hyper-Threading (HTT) | Enables 32 simultaneous execution contexts from 16 physical processing cores, doubling thread density | |
| Vector & Crypto Acceleration | Intel® AVX2 & FMA3 | Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 with 256-bit integer vectors and Fused Multiply-Add 3, doubling peak theoretical FLOPs over AVX |
| Intel® AES-NI & CLMUL | Hardware-accelerated AES encryption and Carry-Less Multiplication for wire-speed VPNs and encrypted ZFS storage pools | |
| BMI1, BMI2 & F16C | Bit manipulation instructions and half-precision floating-point conversion routines for machine learning data formats | |
| Platform Security & Power | Intel® TXT & XD bit | Trusted Execution Technology and Execute Disable Bit memory buffer protection against malicious execution attacks |
| Intel® Turbo Boost 2.0 | Dynamic multi-step frequency scaling boosting clock speeds from 2.30 GHz base to 2.80 GHz all-core and 3.60 GHz max turbo | |
| Intel® FIVR & EIST | Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator with Enhanced SpeedStep enabling millisecond-granularity per-core power state transitions |
5. PassMark Benchmark Dossier & Synthetic Performance (PerformanceTest V10)
Multithread Rating (CPU Mark)
18,847
Median: 19,890 across 236 samples (Low margin for error)
Single Thread Rating
1,932
Single-core execution throughput (MOps/Sec)
Data Encryption (AES-NI)
5,812
MBytes/Sec sustained hardware cryptographic throughput
PassMark PerformanceTest V10 Detailed Test Suite Results
| Test Suite Routine | Average Result Metric | Operational Context |
|---|---|---|
| Integer Math | 80,604 MOps/Sec | General core processing & hypervisor kernel scheduling |
| Floating Point Math | 40,243 MOps/Sec | Mathematical modeling, scientific compute & graphics rendering |
| Find Prime Numbers | 86 Million Primes/Sec | Pure 16-core integer compute pipeline throughput |
| Random String Sorting | 44,388 Thousand Strings/Sec | DDR4 memory controller & 40 MB L3 cache indexing efficiency |
| Data Encryption | 5,812 MBytes/Sec | Hardware AES-NI encrypted ZFS arrays & multi-gigabit IPsec/WireGuard VPNs |
| Data Compression | 335,889 KBytes/Sec | Real-time ZFS LZ4 compression & Proxmox backup archival pipelines |
| Physics Simulation | 1,126 Frames/Sec | Real-time dynamic physics across 32 concurrent execution threads |
| Extended Instructions | 19,739 Million Matrices/Sec | Intel AVX2 & FMA3 256-bit vectorized matrix transformations |
| Single Thread Performance | 1,932 MOps/Sec | Single-core serial latency and interactive management console responsiveness |
PassMark Relative Hierarchy: Haswell-EP Stack
| Processor Model | Cores / Frequency | Average CPU Mark | Relative Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Xeon E5-2699 v3 | 18C / 36T @ 2.30 GHz | 19,301 | +2.4% |
| Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 (Exhibit #2617) | 16C / 32T @ 2.30 GHz | 18,847 | Baseline (0.0%) |
| Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 | 14C / 28T @ 2.60 GHz | 17,614 | -6.5% |
| Intel Xeon E5-2690 v3 | 12C / 24T @ 2.60 GHz | 15,892 | -15.7% |
| Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 | 12C / 24T @ 2.50 GHz | 15,310 | -18.8% |
| Intel Xeon E5-2670 v3 | 12C / 24T @ 2.30 GHz | 14,198 | -24.7% |
| Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 | 10C / 20T @ 2.30 GHz | 12,385 | -34.3% |
| Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 | 6C / 12T @ 2.40 GHz | 7,215 | -61.7% |
6. Platform Synergy: Dual-Socket Deployment in HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 Server (Exhibit #2644)
Flagship Enterprise Computing Architecture
The two Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 processors cataloged in the museum collection are deployed in a symmetric dual-socket (2S SMP) configuration within the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 Server (Exhibit #2644, Serial Number: CZJ7450QBT). Built upon the enterprise Intel C610 (Wellsburg) chipset platform, the dual-processor architecture forms a high-density 32-core / 64-thread compute powerhouse:
| Hardware Subsystem | Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 (Per CPU) | HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 (Exhibit #2644) |
|---|---|---|
| CPU Sockets / Compute | Socket R3 (LGA 2011-v3) • 16C / 32T @ 2.30 GHz (3.60 GHz Turbo) | Dual Sockets (2S SMP) • Combined 32 Cores / 64 Threads linked via dual 9.60 GT/s QPI buses |
| Cache Capacity | 40 MB Intel Smart Cache (dual-ring architecture) | Combined 80 MB L3 Smart Cache across dual sockets |
| Memory Subsystem | Quad-Channel DDR4 memory controller (68.3 GB/s peak) | 24 DIMM slots fully populated: 768 GB (24 × 32 GB Samsung DDR4-2400 RDIMMs) across 8 memory channels |
| PCI Express Root Complex | 40 lanes PCI Express 3.0 direct root ports | Combined 80 PCIe 3.0 lanes feeding secondary riser cards, SAS HBAs, and accelerators |
| Compute Accelerator Role | Host CPU providing high-bandwidth PCIe 3.0 x16 pipeline | Houses AMD Instinct MI50 (32 GB HBM2, PCIe 3.0 x16, ROCm/HPC AI accelerator) |
| Storage Controller | Direct PCIe 3.0 root interface for NVMe & RAID | HPE Flexible Smart Array P440ar/2GB FBWC 12Gb/s SAS controller driving Intel SSDs and SAS arrays |
| Management & Power | Integrated thermal and power telemetry via PECI / DMI | HPE iLO 4 (Firmware v3.40) • Dual redundant HPE 800W Flex Slot Platinum PSUs (96% efficiency) |
7. Curator’s Assessment & Homelab Applicability
- Museum Hardware Provenance: Mateo’s Museum archive preserves 2 verified physical units of the Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 processor. Both units feature production S-Spec SR1XE (C1 stepping) and are actively deployed in a balanced dual-socket 2S configuration inside the museum’s flagship HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 2U server (Serial:
CZJ7450QBT). - Massive 32-Core / 64-Thread Compute Density: Delivering a single-socket Average CPU Mark of 18,847 (median 19,890) and combining into 32 physical cores and 64 execution threads across the dual-socket DL380 Gen9 host, the platform provides immense compute density for dense container orchestration, multi-tenant virtual machines, and Monero RandomX mining (~12.3 kH/s).
- Generational Vector Leap (AVX2 & FMA3): Haswell-EP introduced AVX2 and 256-bit Fused Multiply-Add 3, yielding an Extended Instructions score of 19,739 Million Matrices/Sec. This doubles vector compute throughput compared to previous Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge generations, making it capable of modern numerical acceleration.
- Exceptional Cryptographic & Compression Performance: Dedicated hardware AES-NI instructions achieve 5,812 MB/s in PassMark encryption routines alongside 335,889 KB/s in data compression. This guarantees line-rate ZFS pool LZ4 compression and wire-speed multi-gigabit IPsec/WireGuard VPN encryption without CPU saturation.
- Massive Memory Footprint (768 GB DDR4 ECC): Supported by the processor’s quad-channel DDR4 memory controller and fully populated with 24 × 32 GB Samsung RDIMMs in the DL380 Gen9 chassis, the system offers 768 GB of aggregate ECC memory, completely eliminating memory starvation for large in-memory databases and virtualization labs.
- Dual 9.60 GT/s QPI & Cluster-on-Die (COD): Operating at Intel’s peak 9.60 GT/s QPI transfer rate and utilizing Cluster-on-Die mode, the processor pair minimizes NUMA cross-socket latency, preserving deterministic memory access times across the complex dual-ring topology.
- AI Acceleration Host for AMD Instinct MI50: Serving as the compute host for an AMD Instinct MI50 (32 GB HBM2, ROCm/HPC accelerator), the dual Xeon E5-2698 v3 configuration delivers the PCIe 3.0 bandwidth, NUMA locality, and high-capacity RAM subsystem needed to feed large machine learning models and parallel computational pipelines.