The Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 is a server/workstation processor with 28 cores, launched in July 2017. It is part of the Xeon Platinum lineup, using the Skylake-SP architecture with Socket 3647. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 56 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to eight Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs can link up in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. Xeon Platinum 8180 has 38.5 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.5 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.8 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon Platinum 8180 on a 14 nm production process using 8,000 million transistors. The multiplier is locked on Xeon Platinum 8180, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 205 W, the Xeon Platinum 8180 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 8180, 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.