In addition to the new PC cases and PSUs, ENERMAX also unveiled a couple of new and interesting AIO CPU coolers and fans at the Computex 2024 show, including the LIQTECH XTR AiO which can handle quite a high thermal load, the new AQUACore concept, which is actually a compact CPU cooler that integrates the pump and the radiator into a compact solution, and new Montage Flow fans with magnetic daisy-chaining.

The one that piqued our interest is definitely the LIQTECH XTR AIO liquid CPU cooler series, which can handle some impressive thermal loads. To be available in 240 mm, 280 mm, and 360 mm radiator sizes, the LIQTECH XTR can easily AMD Threadripper and Intel Xeon processors, offering 100 percent coverage and uses a powerful EF1 pump in combination with patented shunt-channel technology. According to Enermax and what we saw at the show, the smaller 240 mm can handle well over 500 W of thermal load, while the 360 mm one goes well over 900 W. The LIQTECH XTR also includes a digital built-in display on the pump/block unit, which shows CPU and GPU temperature, or fan RPM data.

The subsidiary of MiTAC Holdings Corp, MiTAC Computing Technology and its server brand TYAN, the leading manufacturer in server platform design worldwide, unveil their new server systems and motherboards optimized for today's AI, HPC, cloud, and enterprise workloads at COMPUTEX 2024, Booth # M1120 in Taipei, Taiwan from June 4 to June 7. Harnessing the power of the latest Intel Xeon 6 processor and 4th and 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, these solutions deliver cutting-edge performance.

"For over a decade, MiTAC has worked with Intel at the forefront of server technology innovation, consistently delivering cutting-edge solutions tailored for AI and high-performance computing (HPC). The integration of Intel's latest Xeon 6 processors into our MiTAC and TYAN server platforms transforms computational capabilities, significantly enhancing AI performance, boosting efficiency, and scaling cloud operations. These advancements empower our customers with a competitive edge through superior performance and optimized total cost of ownership," said Rick Hwang, President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation.

ASUS, a leading data center solutions provider, today proudly unveils its expertise in delivering comprehensive solutions for high-performance computing (HPC), AI, and diverse enterprise needs in its Data Center Solutions VIP Showcase at Computex 2024. At the event, ASUS demonstrates its expertise in servers, storage and data center architecture with support for Intel, AMD and NVIDIA technologies, as well as its liquid/air-cooling solutions and proprietary, high-quality software platforms. Equipped to meet the demanding requirements of today's data-intensive workloads, ASUS offers tailored solutions that are meticulously designed to elevate performance, reliability and scalability. From research institutions, financial firms, to manufacturing facilities, ASUS stands ready to empower organizations with cutting-edge HPC capabilities.

Unveiling enhanced flexibility with Intel Xeon 6 processors
To build a top-notch ecosystem, strong integration and partnerships are crucial for excellence. ASUS proudly introduces its latest servers, RS700-E12 and RS720-E12 series, powered by Intel Xeon 6 processors. Through fine tuning in hardware design, we've adeptly addressed the challenges of higher performance as well as increased power consumption, while also embracing modular design for more efficient motherboard layout and serviceability. Empowered by ASPEED AST2600 and PFR AST1060, these advancements have been seamlessly integrated into the all-new ASMB12-iKVM on the Intel Xeon 6 processor platform, resulting in remarkable CPU performance and fortified out-of-band management and security. This new architecture enriches all workloads, leveraging Intel 7 process paired with multiple compute cores etched on Intel 3 process, to deliver unparalleled efficiency and reliability.

GIGABYTE Technology, Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in servers and industrial motherboards, today launched products supporting Intel Xeon 6 Processor (LGA 4710) with Efficient-cores in a single or dual socket configuration. GIGABYTE's new products span its entire enterprise portfolio from GPU servers to liquid cooling servers to motherboards. With Intel's new processor roadmap addressing a broad range of compute needs in the server market, Efficient-cores (E-cores) and Performance-cores (P-cores) have their unique advantages, and both are supported on this platform. E-cores are available today, with P-core products becoming available in the future. The solutions within have distinct advantages for cloud, networking and media, and data services workloads that value consistent performance, greater energy efficiency, and dense rack and core density.

GIGABYTE's enterprise portfolio for the Intel Xeon 6 processor spans GPU servers, direct liquid cooling (DLC) servers, multi-node servers, general purpose motherboards and servers, and edge servers. By releasing a wide range of servers, data centers can quickly integrate it to achieve dynamic goals such as in GIGA POD, a rack-scale supercomputing AI infrastructure by GIGABYTE. The new Xeon based servers by GIGABYTE are also highly compatible with cloud-native software stacks for portability and consistency in containerized applications in distributed systems.

MSI, a world leader in AI PC and AIoT solutions, is going to participate in COMPUTEX 2024 from 6/4 to 6/7. With cutting-edge skills, MSI's AIoT team has been focusing on product development and hardware-software integration for AI applications in recent years, achieving great results on application development in various fields. MSI will create an exclusive exhibition area for Smart City to introduce AIoT application scenarios which have five topics including AI & Datacenter, Automation, Industrial Solutions, Commercial Solutions, and Automotive Solutions.

The most iconic products this year are diverse GPU platforms for AI markets and a new CXL (Compute Express Link) memory expansion server which was developed by the cooperation of key players in the CXL technology field, including AMD, Samsung, and Micron. Besides, the latest Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) powered by NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin is also one of the major highlights. For new energy vehicles, we will first disclose the complete AC/DC chargers coupled with MSI E-Connect dashboard (EMS) and AI-powered car recognition applications to show the one-stop service of HW/SW integration.

ZOTAC Technology, a global manufacturer focused on innovative and high-performance hardware solutions, will return to COMPUTEX 2024 to showcase its biggest push yet into brand-new product categories. At this year's exhibition, ZOTAC will unveil its first attempt at creating a unique Handheld Gaming PC with advanced controls and features, allowing gamers to enjoy their favorite games on the go like never before with maximum competitive advantage.

Also in ZOTAC's extensive lineup is a full-fledged selection of AI-focused computational hardware, including a new workstation-grade External GPU Box series for hassle-free GPU compute and AI acceleration, ZBOX mini PCs powered by Intel Core Ultra CPUs equipped with integrated neural processing units (NPU), as well as other enterprise-grade solutions, such as GPU Servers and Arm-based NVIDIA Jetson systems, offering users a broad selection of AI accelerators in applications big and small.

The 63rd edition of the TOP500 reveals that Frontier has once again claimed the top spot, despite no longer being the only exascale machine on the list. Additionally, a new system has found its way into the Top 10.

The Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA remains the most powerful system on the list with an HPL score of 1.206 EFlop/s. The system has a total of 8,699,904 combined CPU and GPU cores, an HPE Cray EX architecture that combines 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPUs optimized for HPC and AI with AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators, and it relies on Cray's Slingshot 11 network for data transfer. On top of that, this machine has an impressive power efficiency rating of 52.93 GFlops/Watt - putting Frontier at the No. 13 spot on the GREEN500.

ASRock today introduced the W790 WS R2.0 motherboard for workstations powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon W-3400 and W-2400 series processors in the Socket LGA4677 package. Although its model name suggests that it is a revision of the W790 WS, the new W790 WS R2.0 appears to be a lite version of the original, which removes several I/O features. To begin with, the fancy I/O shroud makes way for bare connectors, where you can see several of the connectors stripped away. While the CPU VRM appears unchanged, the VRM heatsinks used on the R2.0 are of a simpler design. The design effort behind both these changes appears to be to make the board friendly to certain kinds of rackmount chassis.

Besides the design changes, the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 loses out on Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6E, and only has a single 10 GbE interface instead of dual-10 GbE on the original W790 WS. These aside, the W790 WS R2.0 is still a very capable workstation motherboard for the platform it's based on. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe power; and uses a 22-phase CPU VRM. The board features four PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/x16/NC or x16/NC/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8), and one PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical x4). The CPU socket is wired to eight memory slots, supporting quad-channel DDR5 memory, with support for DDR5 RDIMM-3DS, a total memory capacity of 2 TB, and a maximum overclocked memory speed of DDR5-6800.

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), today announced it is leading the industry by validating and shipping its high-capacity monolithic 32Gb DRAM die-based 128 GB DDR5 RDIMM memory in speeds up to 5,600 MT/s on all leading server platforms. Powered by Micron's industry-leading 1β (1-beta) technology, the 128 GB DDR5 RDIMM memory delivers more than 45% improved bit density, up to 22% improved energy efficiency and up to 16% lower latency over competitive 3DS through-silicon via (TSV) products.

Micron's collaboration with industry leaders and customers has yielded broad adoption of these new high-performance, large-capacity modules across high-volume server CPUs. These high-speed memory modules were engineered to meet the performance needs of a wide range of mission-critical applications in data centers, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), high-performance computing (HPC), in-memory databases (IMDBs) and efficient processing for multithreaded, multicore count general compute workloads. Micron's 128 GB DDR5 RDIMM memory will be supported by a robust ecosystem including AMD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel, Supermicro, along with many others.

Intel is preparing to unveil its cutting-edge Xeon 6 series server CPUs, known as Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest. These forthcoming processors are set to deliver a significant boost in performance, foreshadowing a new era of computing power, albeit with a trade-off in increased power consumption. Two days ago, Yuuki_Ans posted information about the Beechnut City validation platform. Today, he updated the X thread with more information that Intel is significantly boosting core counts across its new Xeon 6 lineup. The flagship Xeon 6 6980P is a behemoth, packing 128 cores with a blistering 500 Watt Thermal Design Power (TDP) rating. In fact, Intel is equipping five of its Xeon 6 CPUs with a sky-high 500 W TDP, including the top four Granite Rapids parts and even the flagship Sierra Forest SKU, which is composed entirely of efficiency cores. This marks a substantial increase from Intel's previous Xeon Scalable processors, which maxed out at 350-385 Watts.

The trade-off for this performance boost is a dramatic rise in power consumption. By nearly doubling the TDP ceiling, Intel can double the core count from 64 to 128 cores on its Granite Rapids CPUs, vastly improving its multi-core capabilities. However, this focus on raw performance over power efficiency means server manufacturers must redesign their cooling solutions to accommodate Intel's flagship 500 W parts adequately. Failure to do so could lead to potential thermal throttling issues. Intel's next-gen Xeon CPU architectures are shaping up to be one of the most considerable generational leaps in recent memory. Still, they come with a trade-off in power consumption that vendors and data centers will need to address. Densely packing thousands of these 500-Watt SKUs will lead to new power and thermal challenges, and we wait to see future data center projects utilizing them.

Intel's next-generation Xeon 6 processors, codenamed Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest, are poised to shake up the CPU market with its cutting-edge architecture and features. Hardware leaker YuuKi_AnS has provided the first glimpse of Intel's upcoming platform, revealing images of the vibrant red-colored validation platform dubbed Beechnut City. Beechnut City serves as a crucial testing ground for the forthcoming Xeon 6 series, which will comprise both the Granite Rapids (P-Core architecture) and Sierra Forest (E-Core architecture) processors. Although not intended for commercial release, this validation platform is designed to rigorously test and validate the new CPUs. The dual-socket LGA-4710 platform boasts the capability to support up to two Sierra Forest or Granite Rapids CPUs simultaneously, promising a significant performance boost for data centers and other high-performance computing applications.

According to YuuKi_AnS's leaks, the Xeon 6 series may feature SKU names such as Xeon 6 6900E/P (Platinum), Xeon 6 6700E/P (Gold), Xeon 6 6500P (Silver), and Xeon 6 6300P (Bronze). One of the platform's standout features is its support for 32 DIMMs in 16-channel memory system, similar to the previously discussed Avenue City platform, which can accommodate up to 24 DDR5-6400 DIMMs in 12-channel memory. The Sierra Forest variant with 144 cores is expected to launch in the first half of this year, while the 288-core variant is slated for release in the second half. Notably, the Xeon 6 series will mark a significant shift in Intel's CPU lineup, as it will be the first CPU series to feature only Efficient cores, akin to AMD's Zen Dense cores (such as Bergamo). This move aligns with Intel's strategy to cater to the growing demand for high-performance computing and data center applications, where energy efficiency and performance are essential.There is also a picture of server configuration of Avenue City was pictured a while ago, thanks to the previous leak of Yuuki_Ans, which can be seen below in addition to Beechnut City platform.

During the Vision 2024 event, Intel announced that its upcoming Xeon processors will be branded under the new "Xeon 6" moniker. This rebranding effort aims to simplify the company's product stack and align with the recent changes made to its consumer CPU naming scheme. In contrast to the previous "x Generation Xeon Scalable", the new branding aims to simplify the product family. The highly anticipated Sierra Forest and Granite Ridge chips will be the first processors to bear the Xeon 6 branding, and they are set to launch in the coming months. Intel has confirmed that Sierra Forest, designed entirely with efficiency cores (E-cores), remains on track for release this quarter. Supermicro has already announced early availability and remote testing programs for these chips. Intel's Sierra Forest is set to deliver a substantial leap in performance. According to the company, it will offer a 2.4X improvement in performance per watt and a staggering 2.7X better performance per rack compared to the previous generation. This means that 72 Sierra Forest server racks will provide the same performance as 200 racks equipped with older second-gen Xeon CPUs, leading to significant power savings and a boost in overall efficiency for data centers upgrading their system.

Intel has also teased an exciting feature in its forthcoming Granite Ridge processors-support for the MXFP4 data format. This new precision format, backed by the Open Compute Project (OCP) and major industry players like NVIDIA, AMD, and Arm, promises to revolutionize performance. It could reduce next-token latency by up to 6.5X compared to fourth-gen Xeons using FP16. Additionally, Intel stated that Granite Ridge will be capable of running 70 billion parameter Llama-2 models, a capability that could open up new possibilities in data processing. Intel claims that 70 billion 4-bit models run entirely on Xeon in just 86 milliseconds. While Sierra Forest is slated for this quarter, Intel has not provided a specific launch timeline for Granite Ridge, stating only that it will arrive "soon after" its E-core counterpart. The Xeon 6 branding aims to simplify the product stack and clarify customer performance tiers as the company gears up for these major releases.

At the Intel Vision 2024 customer and partner conference, Intel introduced the Intel Gaudi 3 accelerator to bring performance, openness and choice to enterprise generative AI (GenAI), and unveiled a suite of new open scalable systems, next-gen products and strategic collaborations to accelerate GenAI adoption. With only 10% of enterprises successfully moving GenAI projects into production last year, Intel's latest offerings address the challenges businesses face in scaling AI initiatives.

"Innovation is advancing at an unprecedented pace, all enabled by silicon - and every company is quickly becoming an AI company," said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. "Intel is bringing AI everywhere across the enterprise, from the PC to the data center to the edge. Our latest Gaudi, Xeon and Core Ultra platforms are delivering a cohesive set of flexible solutions tailored to meet the changing needs of our customers and partners and capitalize on the immense opportunities ahead."

A CPU-Z screenshot has been shared by YuuKi_AnS—the image contains details about an alleged next-gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor engineering sample (ES). The hardware tipster noted in (yesterday's post) that an error had occurred in the application's identification of this chunk of prototype silicon. CPU-Z v2.09 has recognized the basics—an Intel Granite Rapids-SP processor that is specced with 80 cores, 2.5 GHz max frequency, a whopping 672 MB of L3 cache, and a max. TDP rating of 350 W. The counting of 320 threads seems to be CPU-Z's big mistake here—previous Granite Rapids-related leaks have not revealed Team Blue's Hyper-Threading technology producing such impressive numbers.

The alleged prototype status of this Xeon chip is very apparent in CPU-Z's tracking of single and multi-core performance—the benchmark results are really off the mark, when compared to finalized current-gen scores (produced by rival silicon). Team Blue's next-gen Xeon series is likely positioned to catch up with AMD EPYC's deployment of large core counts—"Granite Rapids" has been linked to the Intel 3 foundry node, reports from last month suggest that XCC-type processors could be configured with "counts going up to 56-core/112-threads." Micron is prepping next-gen "Tall Form Factor" memory modules, designed with future enterprise processor platforms in mind—including Intel's Xeon Scalable "Granite Rapids" family. Industry watchdogs posit that Team Blue will be launching this series in the coming months.

GIGABYTE Technology and Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in enterprise solutions, will showcase their solutions at the GIGABYTE booth #1224 at NVIDIA GTC, a global AI developer conference running through March 21. This event will offer GIGABYTE the chance to connect with its valued partners and customers, and together explore what the future in computing holds.

The GIGABYTE booth will focus on GIGABYTE's enterprise products that demonstrate AI training and inference delivered by versatile computing platforms based on NVIDIA solutions, as well as direct liquid cooling (DLC) for improved compute density and energy efficiency. Also not to be missed at the NVIDIA booth is the MGX Pavilion, which features a rack of GIGABYTE servers for the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip architecture.

MAINGEAR, a leading provider of high-performance custom PC systems, and Phison, a global leader in NAND controllers and storage solutions, today unveiled groundbreaking MAINGEAR PRO AI workstations with Phison's aiDAPTIV+ technology. Specifically engineered to democratize Large Language Model (LLM) development and training for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), these ultra-powerful workstations incorporate aiDAPTIV+ technology to deliver supercomputer LLM training capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional AI training servers.

As the demand for large-scale generative AI models continues to surge and their complexity increases, the potential for LLMs also expands. However, this rapid advancement in LLM AI technology has led to a notable boost in hardware requirements, making model training cost-prohibitive and inaccessible for many small to medium businesses.

MiTAC Computing Technology, a subsidiary of MiTAC Holdings Corp., proudly reveals its groundbreaking suite of server solutions that deliver unsurpassed capabilities with the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. MiTAC introduces its cutting-edge signature platforms that seamlessly integrate the Intel Data Center GPUs, both Intel Max Series and Intel Flex Series, an unparalleled leap in computing performance is unleashed targeting HPC and AI applications.

MiTAC Announce its Full Array of Platforms Supporting the latest 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
Last year, Intel transitioned the right to manufacture and sell products based on Intel Data Center Solution Group designs to MiTAC. MiTAC confidently announces a transformative upgrade to its product offerings, unveiling advanced platforms that epitomize the future of computing. Featured with up to 64 cores, expanded shared cache, increased UPI and DDR5 support, the latest 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors deliver remarkable performance per watt gains across various workloads. MiTAC's Intel Server M50FCP Family and Intel Server D50DNP Family fully support the latest 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, made possible through a quick BIOS update and easy technical resource revisions which provide unsurpassed performance to diverse computing environments.

Supermicro, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, delivers an expanded portfolio of purpose-built infrastructure solutions to accelerate performance and increase efficiency in 5G and telecom workloads. With one of the industry's most diverse offerings, Supermicro enables customers to expand public and private 5G infrastructures with improved performance per watt and support for new and innovative AI applications. As a long-term advocate of open networking platforms and a member of the O-RAN Alliance, Supermicro's portfolio incorporates systems featuring 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors, AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors, and the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.

"Supermicro is expanding our broad portfolio of sustainable and state-of-the-art servers to address the demanding requirements of 5G and telco markets and Edge AI," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "Our products are not just about technology, they are about delivering tangible customer benefits. We quickly bring data center AI capabilities to the network's edge using our Building Block architecture. Our products enable operators to offer new capabilities to their customers with improved performance and lower energy consumption. Our edge servers contain up to 2 TB of high-speed DDR5 memory, 6 PCIe slots, and a range of networking options. These systems are designed for increased power efficiency and performance-per-watt, enabling operators to create high-performance, customized solutions for their unique requirements. This reassures our customers that they are investing in reliable and efficient solutions."

Huawei's new server CPU based on the HiSilicon Taishan V120 core has shown impressive single-threaded performance that matches AMD's Zen 3 architecture in a leaked Geekbench 6 benchmark. The Taishan V120 is likely being manufactured on SMIC's 7 nm process node. The Geekbench 6 result posted on social media does not identify the exact Huawei server CPU model, but speculation points to it being the upcoming Kunpeng 930 chip. In the benchmark, the Taishan V120 CPU operating at 2.9 GHz scored 1527 in the single-core test. This positions it nearly equal to AMD's EPYC 7413 server CPU based on the Zen 3 architecture, which boosts up to 3.6 GHz and which scored 1538 points. It also matches the single-threaded performance of Intel's Coffee Lake-based Xeon E-2136 from 2018, even though that Intel chip can reach 4.5 GHz boost speeds, scoring 1553 points.

The Taishan V120 core first appeared in Huawei's Kirin 9000 smartphone SoC in 2020. Using the core in server CPUs would allow Huawei to achieve competitive single-threaded performance to rival AMD's last-generation EPYC Milan and Intel's older Skylake server chips. Multi-threaded benchmarks will be required to gauge the Kunpeng 930's overall performance fully when it launches. Huawei continues innovating its ARM-based server CPU designs even while facing restrictions on manufacturing and selling chips internationally due to its inclusion on the US Entity List in 2019. The impressive single-threaded results versus leading x86 competitors demonstrate Huawei's resilience and self-reliance in developing homegrown data center technology through its HiSilicon division. More details on the Kunpeng 930 server chip will likely surface later this year, along with server configurations from Chinese OEMs.

To answer network operators' demands for energy-efficient scaling, Intel Corporation disclosed two major updates to drive footprint, power and total cost of ownership (TCO) savings across 5G core networks: the preview of its Intel Xeon next-gen processors, code-named Sierra Forest, with up to 288 Efficient-cores (E-cores), and the commercial availability of the Intel Infrastructure Power Manager (IPM) software for 5G core.

"Communication service providers require greater infrastructure efficiency as 5G core networks continue to build out. With the majority of 5G core networks deployed on Intel Xeon processors today, Intel is uniquely positioned to address these efficiency challenges. By introducing new Efficient-cores to our roadmap and with the commercial adoption of our Intel Infrastructure Power Manager software, service providers can slash TCO while achieving unmatched performance and power savings across their networks," said Alex Quach, Intel vice president and general manager of Wireline and Core Network Division. Energy consumption and reduction of the infrastructure footprint remain top challenges that network operators face in building out their wireless 5G core network.

At MWC 2024, Intel announced new platforms, solutions and services spanning network and edge AI, Intel Core Ultra processors and the AI PC, and more. In an era where technological advancements are integral to staying competitive, Intel is delivering products and solutions for its customers, partners and expansive ecosystem to capitalize on the emerging opportunities of artificial intelligence and built-in automation, to improve total cost of ownership (TCO) and operational efficiency, and to deliver new innovations and services.

Across today's announcements, Intel is focused on empowering the industry to further modernize and monetize 5G, edge and enterprise infrastructures and investments, and to take advantage of bringing AI Everywhere. For more than a decade, and alongside Intel's customers and partners, the company has been transforming today's network infrastructure from fixed-function to a software-defined platform and driving success at the edge with more than 90,000 real-world deployments.

The JEDEC Board of Directors presented its prestigious 2024 Distinguished Executive Leadership Award to Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, in a ceremony held at Intel's offices in Santa Clara, CA earlier this month. This award stands as JEDEC's highest honor and recognizes the most distinguished senior executives in the electronics industry who promote and support the advancement of JEDEC standards.

"Throughout Pat Gelsinger's distinguished career, he has consistently championed the development of open standards, as evidenced by Intel's contributions in this domain. Under his leadership, Intel has made a tremendous impact on many groundbreaking memory and IO technologies in JEDEC," said Mian Quddus, JEDEC Board of Directors Chairman. He added, "JEDEC is grateful for his invaluable support and that of the Intel team."

Feast your eyes on the first pictures of an Intel "Granite Rapids" Xeon processor wafer, courtesy of Andreas Schilling with HardwareLuxx.de. This is Intel's first commercial silicon built on the new Intel 3 foundry node, which is expected to be the company's final silicon fabrication node to implement FinFET technology; before the company switches to Nanosheets with the next-generation Intel 20A. Intel 3 offers transistor densities and performance competitive to TSMC N3 series, and Samsung 3GA series nodes.

The wafer contains square 30-core tiles, two of which make up a "Granite Rapids-XCC" processor, with CPU core counts going up to 56-core/112-threads (two cores left unused per tile for harvesting). Each of the 30 cores on the tile is a "Redwood Cove" P-core. In comparison, the current "Emerald Rapids" Xeon processor uses "Raptor Cove" cores, and is built on the Intel 7 foundry node. Intel is planning to overcome the CPU core-count deficit to AMD EPYC, including the upcoming EPYC "Turin" Zen 5 processors with their rumored 128-core/256-thread counts, by implementing several on-silicon fixed-function accelerators that speed up popular kinds of server workloads. The "Redwood Cove" core is expected to be Intel's first IA core to implement AVX10 and APX.

Pat Gelsinger—CEO of Intel Corporation—happily revealed late last month, during an earnings call: "Clearwater Forest, our first Intel 18A part for servers has already gone into fab and Panther Lake for clients will be heading into Fab shortly." The former is positioned as the natural successor to Team Blue's many-times-delayed Xeon "Sierra Forest" (all E-Core) processor family. Intel's second generation E-core Xeon "Clearwater Forest" design is expected to launch in 2025, with a deployment of "Darkmont" efficiency-oriented cores. Official product roadmaps and patch notes have revealed basic "Clearwater Forest" information, but we have not seen many leaks. Bionic_Squash has a history of releasing strictly internal Intel presentation slides—Meteor Lake (MTL-S) desktop SKUs were uncovered last April.

Their latest discovery does not include any photo or documented evidence—Bionic_Squash's concise social media post stated: "Clearwater Forest uses 3D stacking with hybrid bonding." This claim points to the possible deployment of Foveros Direct advanced packaging—this technology was expected to be ready at some point within the second half of 2023, although a mid-December technology showcase implied that things were behind schedule. The fanciest "Clearwater Forest" Xeon processors could arrive with a maximum total of 288 E-core count (and 288 threads)—according to Wccftech analysis: "The CPU package is going to consist of a base tile on top of the interposer which is connected through a high-speed I/O, EMIB, and the cores will be sitting on the topmost layer...Foveros Direct technology will allow direct copper-to-copper bonding, enabling low resistance interconnects and around 10-micron bump pitches. Intel itself states that Foveros Direct will blur the boundary between where the wafer ends and the package begins."

A collaboration including Intel, Dell Technologies, Nvidia and the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), today introduces Cardinal, a cutting-edge high-performance computing (HPC) cluster. Purpose-built to meet the increasing demand for HPC resources in Ohio across research, education and industry innovation, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI).

AI and machine learning are integral tools in scientific, engineering and biomedical fields for solving complex research inquiries. As these technologies continue to demonstrate efficacy, academic domains such as agricultural sciences, architecture and social studies are embracing their potential. Cardinal is equipped with the hardware capable of meeting the demands of expanding AI workloads. In both capabilities and capacity, the new cluster will be a substantial upgrade from the system it will replace, the Owens Cluster launched in 2016.