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Intel Announces 10 nm Third Gen Xeon Scalable Processors "Ice Lake"

The server market is the obvious hit for Intel's 10nm technology.

It seems like Intel's main problem with 10nm is the low clock rates, which leads to worse performance compared to their 14nm+++++++++++ process clocked at well over 5GHz (boost). Servers don't want to boost so high. Low and slow benefits servers, as these computers are designed for maximum compute in a given datacenter (Datacenters are limited by two things: either power, or cooling... and cooling is itself limited by power).

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The cache game is very interesting now. AMD offers more L3 cache than anyone else, but I've discussed the downsides of AMD's "split L3 cache" before. In short: AMD's L3 cache is only useful to a "CCX" (for Zen3: a cluster of 8 processors / 16 threads max), while L3 cache from traditional processors (Various ARM chips or Intel) are unified. Consider if 1MB from address 0x80008000 were being read-shared on a 64-core AMD chip with its 8x "split cache", there would be 8-copies of that one address (!!!), leading to 8MBs of read-data across AMD's 8x split cache (of size 256MBs): 3% of its cache. In contrast, Intel would only have 1MB in its unified 60MB L3 cache, or 1.6% of Intel's cache.

As such, large singular datasets (like Databases) will likely perform better on Intel's "smaller" 60MB L3 cache, despite AMD having 256MBs of L3 cache available. On the other hand, any workload with "split data", such as a 8-core / 16thread cloud-servers, will benefit grossly from AMD's architecture. So Azure / AWS / Google Compute are likely leaning towards AMD, while database engineers at Oracle / IBM are thinking Intel still. Or from a LAMP stack perspective: your PHP / Apache processes are most efficient on AMD, but your MySQL processes might be more efficient on Intel.

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In the past, I've talked about how AMD's L3 cache has latency penalties. Lets consider that 1MB region again. If one core were to change the data, it'd have to send a MESI message to Exclusive control of the data it wishes to change. The 63 other processors then need to communicate that their L1 and L2 caches remain unchanged (Total Store Ordering: all writes must be written in order on x86 architecture). Then the core changes the data, and broadcasts the new data to all 63 other processors.

However, as latency intensive as that operation is: there's a huge benefit to AMD's architecture I never thought of till now. AMD's "chiplet + I/O" architecture, starting with Zen2 (and later), means that this kind of MESI-like negotiation of data takes place over IF without affecting DDR4 bandwidth. (Zen1 on the other hand: because DDR4 was "behind" the IFOPs, the necessary MESI messages would reduce DDR4 bandwidth). So core#63, if it was NOT reading/writing to the changed region of memory, would have full memory bandwidth to DDR4 while the cores #0 through #62 were playing with MESI messages.

Of course, Intel's unified L3 and "flatter" NUMA profile (40-cores per NUMA zone instead of AMD's 8-cores per NUMA). But it should be noted that AMD's 4x NUMA (64-core single-socket EPYC) is "more efficient" than Intel's 4x NUMA (160-core quad-socket Xeon Gold) MESI + DDR4 bandwidth perspective. Each of Intel's chips has a memory controller attached (similar to Zen1), instead of a networked I/O chip that can more efficiently allocate bandwidth (like Zen2+). That is to say: Intel's UPI has to share both DDR4 bandwidth AND MESI messages. While AMD's on-package CCXes probably don't suffer much of a DDR4 bandwidth penalty.
Actually, high frequencies have made there way back into the server market due to expensive per core licensing for software
 
The server market is the obvious hit for Intel's 10nm technology.

It seems like Intel's main problem with 10nm is the low clock rates, which leads to worse performance compared to their 14nm+++++++++++ process clocked at well over 5GHz (boost). Servers don't want to boost so high. Low and slow benefits servers, as these computers are designed for maximum compute in a given datacenter (Datacenters are limited by two things: either power, or cooling... and cooling is itself limited by power).

There's still a freq deficit to be had in the server space going from Skylake > Superfin Sunny Cove. It just isn't as drastic as with Skylake > 10+ Sunny Cove mobile. And as to the "servers don't want to boost so high", EPYC 7Fx2 and 7xF3 have something to say about that.

Yeah it would have been a hit if Ice Lake-SP had showed up when it was supposed to, which was to make it to market between Rome and Milan. Instead, we got hot dumpster fire filler that is Cascade Lake and Cooper Lake and now Ice Lake's job is no longer to hang on to the performance crown, but now to turn a product that's "utterly laughable" into "at least competitive".

At least now performance is in a good enough place where existing Intel customers can actually justify staying on Intel for existing infrastructure and support. But if Gelsinger can deliver on the Sapphire Rapids promise on time, Ice Lake is all the more dead.

It's Rocket Lake all over again, except in the server space. Long-anticipated product bringing the new arch, actually not too shabby a product on its own, instead pushed further and further back until it's been made irrelevant by time, and it's only got less than a pitiful 6 months' worth of time on the market before the next generation is rushed in to stop the bleeding.

2021, the year where empty 10nm promises finally came home to roost.
 
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Intel along with IBM has cut a deal with the US govt while providing future jobs for Americans.

Meanwhile ..


never underestimate how much money the USA government is willing to waste... *coughs* *1 trillion dollar F-35 Lightning program* *coughs* boy not being able to afford the antibiotics I needed when I was 17 sure was fun times. ah, good ol America ~
 
never underestimate how much money the USA government is willing to waste... *coughs* *1 trillion dollar F-35 Lightning program* *coughs* boy not being able to afford the antibiotics I needed when I was 17 sure was fun times. ah, good ol America ~
Spends ~800 billion dollars on the military yearly, can't afford proper healthcare like every other country

Yeah I'm sure glad I live in Austria right now
 
Intel along with IBM has cut a deal with the US govt while providing future jobs for Americans.

Meanwhile ..

You mean easy to exploit free money through never paying taxes. It's always a game. Govt has no real interest other than installing backdoors and getting their bribes. Intel and IBM have the money to build fabs, but they won't without free money. Why pay for a fab when you can get it for free?
 
You mean easy to exploit free money through never paying taxes. It's always a game. Govt has no real interest other than installing backdoors and getting their bribes. Intel and IBM have the money to build fabs, but they won't without free money. Why pay for a fab when you can get it for free?
You live in the US yet you would rather get your chips from overseas ... ok
 
Spends ~800 billion dollars on the military yearly, can't afford proper healthcare like every other country

Yeah I'm sure glad I live in Austria right now
Why have health care when you can just send in a drone ?
 
You live in the US yet you would rather get your chips from overseas ... ok
I don't care where it comes from as long as it isn't Intel.

Also, never believe this kind of crap. They can pretend to build, get the subsidy and never complete it.
And don't forget there's nothing stopping them from hiring mostly foreign workers for nothing and abusing them (govt will not negotiate this). That's the intel way.
 
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Still ice on the lakes here................
 
eh, that was some lazyass 15mins job ... that's hardly too much free time lmao

1617757620348.png


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So I guess I need to go full galaxy brain?

1617757703591.png
 
You live in the US yet you would rather get your chips from overseas ... ok
That comment has racist undertones, unless your concern is the economy?
 
Spends ~800 billion dollars on the military yearly, can't afford proper healthcare like every other country

Yeah I'm sure glad I live in Austria right now

I do find it rather odd, that the government of the USA cares about me now and wants to give me a free vaccine... but when I was throwing up for three weeks straight at age 17 they didn't care I couldn't afford my antibiotics... interesting existence. meh
 
I do find it rather odd, that the government of the USA cares about me now and wants to give me a free vaccine... but when I was throwing up for three weeks straight at age 17 they didn't care I couldn't afford my antibiotics... interesting existence. meh
Flu vaccine market is 7 bil and most never get it. Manufacture a crisis and force/trick half the planet into getting it, plus it won't work requiring annual shots = infinite money. Just look at the stocks of nearly every megacorp : record profits.

Everything is about money. To argue otherwise is beyond naive.
 
never underestimate how much money the USA government is willing to waste... *coughs* *1 trillion dollar F-35 Lightning program* *coughs* boy not being able to afford the antibiotics I needed when I was 17 sure was fun times. ah, good ol America ~
You should be grateful. America is having an obesity pandemic. Nothing cures that like a good old intestinal parasite.
3 weeks is almost ~45-50lb weight loss camp.
 
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That comment has racist undertones, unless your concern is the economy
I would have given them the benefit of the doubt and assumed it is an economic concern.
If not then the next (considerable) leap is possibly xenophobia, but really everyone knows supporting jobs and businesses in your own country is better for your own economy and thus, ones self. All other things being equal of course.
 
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