The Intel Xeon Platinum 8260 is a server/workstation processor with 24 cores, launched in December 2018. It is part of the Xeon Platinum lineup, using the Cascade Lake-SP architecture with Socket 3647. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 48 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to eight Xeon Platinum 8260 CPUs can link up in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. Xeon Platinum 8260 has 35.75 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.4 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.9 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon Platinum 8260 on a 14 nm production process using 8,000 million transistors. The multiplier is locked on Xeon Platinum 8260, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 165 W, the Xeon Platinum 8260 is extremely power hungry, which means you need top-notch cooling. Intel's processor supports DDR4 memory. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Xeon Platinum 8260, 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 has added support for the newer AVX2 and AVX-512 instructions, too.