The Intel Xeon E5-2699A v4 was a desktop processor with 22 cores, launched in October 2016, at an MSRP of $4938. It is part of the Xeon E5 lineup, using the Broadwell-EP architecture with Socket 2011-3. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 44 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to two Xeon E5-2699A v4 CPUs can link up in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. Xeon E5-2699A v4 has 55 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.4 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.6 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon E5-2699A v4 on a 14 nm production process using 7,200 million transistors. The multiplier is locked on Xeon E5-2699A v4, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 145 W, the Xeon E5-2699A v4 consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. Intel's processor supports DDR4 memory with a quad-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2400 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, Xeon E5-2699A v4 uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor does not have integrated graphics, you will need a separate graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Xeon E5-2699A v4, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, Intel is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.