Thursday, August 6th 2020
Intel Readies Atom "Grand Ridge" 24-core Processor, Features PCIe 4.0 and DDR5
Intel is monetizing its "small" x86 cores across its product lineup, and not just in entry-level client processors. These cores will be part of Intel's current- and upcoming Hybrid processors, and have been serving Intel's re-branded Atom line of high core-count low-power server processors targeting micro-servers, NAS, network infrastructure hardware, and cellular base-stations. A company slide scored by AdoredTV unveils Intel's Atom "Grand Ridge" 24-core processor. A successor to the 24-core Atom P5962B "Snow Ridge" processor built on 10 nm and featuring "Tremont" CPU cores, "Grand Ridge" sees the introduction of the increased IPC "Gracemont" CPU cores to this segment. These cores make their debut in 2021 under the "Alder Lake" microarchitecture as "small" cores.
The "Grand Ridge" silicon is slated to be built on Intel's 7 nm HLL+ silicon fabrication node, and features 24 "Gracemont" cores across six clusters with four cores, each. Each cluster shares a 4 MB L2 cache among the four cores, while a shared L3 cache of unknown size cushions transfers between the six clusters. Intel is deploying its SCF (scalable coherent fabric) interconnect between the various components of the "Grand Ridge" SoC. Besides the six "Gracemont" clusters, the "Grand Ridge" silicon features a 2-channel DDR5 integrated memory controller, and a PCI-Express gen 4.0 root complex that puts out 16 lanes. It also features fixed function hardware that accelerates network stack processing. There are various USB and GPIO connectivity options relevant to 5G base-station setups. Given Intel's announcement of a delay in rolling out its 7 nm node, "Grand Ridge" can only be expected in 2022, if not later.
Sources:
AdoredTV (YouTube), VideoCardz
The "Grand Ridge" silicon is slated to be built on Intel's 7 nm HLL+ silicon fabrication node, and features 24 "Gracemont" cores across six clusters with four cores, each. Each cluster shares a 4 MB L2 cache among the four cores, while a shared L3 cache of unknown size cushions transfers between the six clusters. Intel is deploying its SCF (scalable coherent fabric) interconnect between the various components of the "Grand Ridge" SoC. Besides the six "Gracemont" clusters, the "Grand Ridge" silicon features a 2-channel DDR5 integrated memory controller, and a PCI-Express gen 4.0 root complex that puts out 16 lanes. It also features fixed function hardware that accelerates network stack processing. There are various USB and GPIO connectivity options relevant to 5G base-station setups. Given Intel's announcement of a delay in rolling out its 7 nm node, "Grand Ridge" can only be expected in 2022, if not later.
28 Comments on Intel Readies Atom "Grand Ridge" 24-core Processor, Features PCIe 4.0 and DDR5
Now it's a 24C beast.
Intel + Logic = Potato
I had an atom powered windows tablet (imagine what power) and after 2 months I was doing something in the bios, battery died... bricked...
Now at work we are starting IoT development so for the machines we are automating the company that designs them also provides a small pc that collects data from the automation for research and proactive maintenance...
The pc is new and is worth about 1k$ and is powered by a f...ing N3827 2c/2t 1.7ghz atom that juat running windows 10 task manager is a stretch... on intel ark the thing costs 34$ and now it's inside an aluminium chassis with a wifi cards and it costs 1000... O.o
I want one to build an OPNsense Gateway / Router with 10 GbE capabilities. With Tremonts enhanced AES-NI features and low idle usage that seems ideal for that.
For Win 10 IoT, you have to have a much more powerful system to do real-time control like that. Sounds like you are also talking about a data collection device, not really an controller. I have worked on some PC based controllers running Beckhoff Twincat but they have to run a more normal CPU.
i.e.
www.beckhoff.com/english.asp?industrial_pc/default.htm
But Xeon Phi had super-high speed HMC (Hybrid Memory Cube) memory. Granted, this was a failure, but its speeds were comparable to HBM. This chip only has 2xDDR5 channels. So it seems kind of odd. Maybe cell-towers don't need much CPU power or something?
^ is this the glue?
I'll take a donation of three for WCG and feet warming purposes.
So is there anything like those with 10nm Tremont cores in the pipeline?
never again after my home server powered by a J1900 died due to bad design of LPC bus and so degradation faster as more I/O you do...
it lasted about 5 years... and NO, it's not ok.
i've got plenty 775 era mobo running perfectly. sp why i have to reinstall (and reconfigure all client!) everything every 5 years?
only my opinion.. but 5 years is not an era, 15 maybe
But for a Gateway Router I prefer bare metal and want a standalone appliance, so that what I need an Atom for. Ryzen idle power draw is just to high to run two of those...
What do we think the TDP of this will be... 35w? Could be nice for a little home lab.
I mostly use Siemens Step7 and TIA Portal and I think there was once the idea from siemens to move to an ARM architecture with their controllers...
I honestly believe that for low power system that need to be snappy x86 is the wrong choice...
ARM is much better suited to those kinds of environments and are way easier to cool for instance... so even harsh conditions would be totally fine...
If you know any, please let me know!
So in that segment, Atom is quite the only choice. I hope that there will be boards with Ryzen 4000u, but with the current shortage of those chips I guess they are reserved for high volume OEMs at the moment.
This is a follow-up to "Snow Ridge" based on the news above. If you google "Snow Ridge" you will quickly find this page. If you click on any product on that page (like, say, the "P5962B" mentioned in the news above) you will see that a 24 core atom-based SoC already exists. Moreover, if you check the "Use Conditions" line, you will see that this is a "Base Transceiver Station" - In other words, Snow Ridge is used to put together cellphone towers/antennae. In this use case, you have a lot of parallel workloads, which are not very intensive by themselves, making a low-power, highly threaded CPU a very good match.
The same would apply to, say, a storage server, where the CPU doesn't do a lot, but may need to do "not a lot" many times in parallel. Oh, and look, storage is mentioned in the news article as well. Surprise, surprise, it is as if computers are used for more than personal computing.
I just said that Intel is stupid for using the Atom brand for highly parallel operations. Do you have anything to say about that ? Because spitting all your sources won't help the fact that it's badly marketed.
Taking "old" speculations into account, you can read this : www.techpowerup.com/187391/intel-to-kill-atom-brand
You will remember it, because, it was true : Atom, for nearly everybody is associated with very low-end CPU. And people agreed, that if were planning on upgrading it, they should rename it.
Like i7 are associated with high-end public CPU.
Like ARM is associated with highly parallelized tasks (but slower).
Like Power 8 processors are associated with highly scalable systems.
Intel chose not to take the name down and kept it in their roadmap.
If I tell you : "you have an i7 last gen" you know what to expect.
If I tell you : "you have an Atom last gen" you have no clue what to expect.
That's the problem. Call it AtomPhi or AtomFoo, I really don't care, but just call it something else so we know a bit without looking into specs and follow the roadmap of each one.
Modern general purpose CPUs like Intel / AMD make are out of order systems, meaning what is being processed can be unloaded and a different 'thread' loaded in order to keep the pipelines full. In the aggregate it is faster, but it also makes it somewhat unpredictible what is going to happen to any specific operation. i.e., it's less deterministic. If this system were say, controlling the drive by wire system in your car, you might want it to be deterministic. Same if it's running a production line in a billion dollar facility.
Now, that is probably outside the normal use case for a 24 core version of this chip though. I'm just saying that predictable in order execution systems have a place, and that's what the Atom is.