GIGABYTE, a global leader in high-performance computing solutions, collaborates with industry partner Xenon at SupercomputingAsia 2024, held at the Sydney International Convention and Exhibition Centre from February 19 to 22. This collaboration showcases cutting-edge technologies, offering diverse solutions that redefine the high-performance computing landscape.

GIGABYTE's Highlights at SCA 2024
At booth 19, GIGABYTE presents the G593-SD0, our flagship AI server, and the industry's first Nvidia-certified HGX H100 8-GPU Server. Equipped with 4th/5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, it incorporates GIGABYTE's thermal design, ensuring optimal performance within its density-optimized 5U server chassis, pushing the boundaries of AI computing. Additionally, GIGABYTE introduces the 2U 4-node H263-S62 server, designed for 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors and now upgraded to the latest 5th Gen, tailored for hybrid and private cloud applications. It features a DLC (Direct Liquid Cooling) solution to efficiently manage heat generated by high-performance computing. Also on display is the newly released W773-W80 workstation, supporting the latest NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada and catering to CAD, DME, research, data and image analysis, and SMB private cloud applications. At SCA 2024, explore our offerings, including rackmount servers and motherboards, reflecting GIGABYTE's commitment to innovative and reliable solutions. This offers a valuable opportunity to discuss your IT infrastructure requirements with our sales and consulting teams, supported by GIGABYTE and Xenon in Australia.

According to a Bloomberg report, Intel is seeking to raise at least $2 billion in equity funding from investors for expanding its fabrication facility in Leixlip, Ireland, known as Fab 34. The chipmaker has hired an advisor to find potential investors interested in providing capital for the project. Fab 34 is currently Intel's only chip plant in Europe that uses cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. It produces processors on the Intel 4 process node, including compute tiles for Meteor Lake client CPUs and expected future Xeon data center chips. While $2 billion alone cannot finance the construction of an entirely new fab today, it can support meaningful expansion or upgrades of existing capacity. Intel likely aims to grow Fab 34's output and/or transition it to more advanced 3 nm-class technologies like Intel 3, Intel 20A, or Intel 18A.

Expanding production aligns with Intel's needs for its own products and its Intel Foundry Services business, providing contract manufacturing. Intel previously secured a $15 billion investment from Brookfield Infrastructure for its Arizona fabs in exchange for a 49% stake, demonstrating the company's willingness to partner to raise capital for manufacturing projects. The Brookfield deal also set a precedent of using outside financing to supplement Intel's own spending budget. It provided $15 billion in effectively free cash flow Intel can redirect to other priorities like new fabs without increasing debt. Intel's latest fundraising efforts for the Ireland site follow a similar equity investment model that leverages outside capital to support its manufacturing expansion plans. Acquiring High-NA EUV machinery for manufacturing is costly, as these machines can reach up to $380 million alone.

GIGABYTE Technology, an IT pioneer whose focus is to advance global industries through cloud and AI computing systems, is coming to MWC 2024 with its next-generation servers empowering telcos, cloud service providers, enterprises, and SMBs to swiftly harness the value of 5G and AI. Featured is a cutting-edge AI server boasting AMD Instinct MI300X 8-GPU, and a comprehensive AI/HPC server series supporting the latest chip technology from AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA. The showcase will also feature integrated green computing solutions excelling in heat dissipation and energy reduction.

Continuing the booth theme "Future of COMPUTING", GIGABYTE's presentation will cover servers for AI/HPC, RAN and Core networks, modular edge platforms, all-in-one green computing solutions, and AI-powered self-driving technology. The exhibits will demonstrate how industries extend AI applications from cloud to edge and terminal devices through 5G connectivity, expanding future opportunities with faster time to market and sustainable operations. The showcase spans from February 26th to 29th at Booth #5F60, Hall 5, Fira Gran Via, Barcelona.

Intel has begun rolling out software binaries compiled with support for upcoming Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) and Advanced Vector Extensions 10 (AVX10) instruction set extensions in their Clear Linux distribution, ahead of any processors officially supporting these capabilities launching. Clear Linux is focusing first on optimized APX and AVX10 versions of foundational software libraries like glibc and Python. This builds on Clear Linux's existing support for optimized x86-64-v2, v3, and v4 code paths, leveraging the latest microarchitectural features of each Intel CPU generation. The rationale is to prepare Clear Linux to fully leverage the performance potential of next-generation Intel Xeon server processors, code-named Granite Rapids, expected to launch later this year.

Granite Rapids will introduce AVX10.1/512 instructions as well as the new APX capabilities, which are currently not well documented implementation wise. By rolling out APX/AVX10 support in software now, Clear Linux aims to have an optimized ecosystem ready when the new processors officially ship. Initially, APX and AVX10 support is being added using the existing GCC compiler. Still, Clear Linux notes they will transition to using the upcoming GCC 14 release with more mature support for these instruction sets. The goal is to eventually have many Clear Linux packages compiled with APX/AVX10 code paths to maximize performance on future Intel CPUs. This continues Clear Linux's strategy of leveraging Intel's latest hardware capabilities in software.

According to Financial Times, a regional court in Düsseldorf, Germany, created a significant setback for Intel on Wednesday, issuing an injunction prohibiting sales of some of its processors due to allegations they infringe on a patent held by R2 Semiconductor. R2, a technology firm based in Palo Alto, California, accused Intel of violating its patent related to processor voltage regulation. The ruling applies to Intel's 10th, 11th, and 12th generation Core processors, known as Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, and Alder Lake, as well as its Ice Lake Xeon server SKUs. Newer processors generations (13th, 14th, etc.) don't infringe the patent. Even though Intel noted that it plans to appeal the decision, the ramifications could extend beyond the company itself. Industry experts warn the court order could lead to a sweeping ban on products containing the disputed Intel chips, including laptops and pre-built PCs from major manufacturers like HP and Dell. R2 has waged an ongoing legal fight across multiple jurisdictions to defend its intellectual property.

After initially filing suit against Intel in the United States, R2 shifted its efforts to Germany and other European countries after its patent was invalidated stateside. Intel strongly denied R2's patent infringement claims, alleging the company's entire business model relies on extracting legal settlements through serial litigation. Intel believes the injunction serves only R2's financial interests while harming consumers, businesses, and the economy. The two firms traded barbs in official statements about the case. R2's CEO, David Fisher, rebuffed Intel's characterization of his company, saying it has only targeted Intel for infringement of its clear IP rights. As the war of words continues, the practical impact of the German court's decision remains uncertain, pending Intel's appeal. However, the preliminary injunction demonstrates the massive financial consequences at stake in battles over technological patents.

It turns out that the 60-core Xeon W9-3595X leak from last week is part of a 14-SKU mid-lifecycle refresh of the Xeon W LGA4677 series targeting the workstation and HEDT markets. The underlying microarchitecture and silicon at the heart of these is "Sapphire Rapids Refresh," it's essentially the same as "Sapphire Rapids," but with CPU core-count increases across the SKUs. If you recall, the "Sapphire Rapids" MCM has a maximum core-count of 60-core/120-thread which is maxed out in Xeon Scalable server processors, but only hit up to 56-core/112-thread with the original W3400 and W2400 series HEDT/workstation chips. This unused 4-core headroom, combined with increases in clock speeds, is how Intel plans to create these 14 SKUs across the new W3500 and W2500 product lines.

As with the original W3400 and W2400 series; what set the W3500 series chips apart from the W2500 series, is the I/O. The W3500 series gets 8-channel DDR5 memory and 128 PCIe Gen 5 lanes, while the W2500 series chips get 4-channel DDR5 memory and 64 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. As we mentioned, this refresh is all about increasing the CPU core counts at existing price points. The top W9-3595X is a 60-core/120-thread chip, compared to the 56-core/112-thread W9-3495X it's replacing. The new W9-3575X gets a massive 8-core uplift, and is now a 44-core/88-thread processor, compared to the 36-core/72-thread W9-3475X. The W7-3565X is 32-core/64-thread, compared to the 28-core/56-thread W7-3465X.

Intel's upcoming high-end desktop (HEDT) processor lineup for enthusiasts and prosumers is around the corner, and today, we managed to see the flagship SKU - the Xeon W9-3595X. Spotted recently on Geekbench benchmarks, this new chip packs a whopping 60 cores and 120 threads, making it Intel's highest core count HEDT offering yet. The Xeon W9-3595X is based on Intel's advanced Sapphire Rapids architecture, built using the Intel 7 process node. It succeeds the previous flagship 56-core W9-3495X, with four additional cores crammed into the new 350 Watt TDP envelope. Clock speeds have taken a slight hit to accommodate the extra cores, with the maximum turbo frequency lowered from 4.8 GHz on the 3495X to 4.6 GHz on the new 3595X.

However, with more cores, the 3595X should still offer a significant multi-threaded performance uplift for heavily parallel workloads. The Xeon W9-3595X will drop into existing LGA-4677 motherboards, like the ASUS PRO WS 790-ACE, after a BIOS update. It features 112 MB of L3 cache, 120 MB of L2 cache (2 MB per core), and continues Intel's push towards higher core counts for enthusiasts, content creators, and workstation users who need maximum multi-threaded horsepower. Pricing and availability details remain unannounced as of now. But with an appearance on public databases, an official launch of the 60-core HEDT juggernaut seems imminent. These new Sapphire Rapids SKUs will likely have extra AI features, like dedicated AI acceleration engines, in the same manner that server-class SKUs do.

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) has today announced that the General Purpose Partition of the MareNostrum 5, a new pre-exascale supercomputer running on Lenovo's HPC infrastructure, has been classified as the top x86 general-purpose cluster on the recently published TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers globally.

Officially inaugurated at Barcelona Supercomputing Center on December 21st, MareNostrum 5 has been built for the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU). The pre-exascale supercomputer will bolster the EU's mission to provide Europe with the most advanced supercomputing technology and accelerate the capacity for artificial intelligence (AI) research, enabling new scientific advances that will help solve global challenges. It aims to empower a wide range of complex HPC-specific applications, from climate research and engineering to material science and earth sciences, adeptly handling tasks that extend beyond the capabilities of cloud computing.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 financial results. "We delivered strong Q4 results, surpassing expectations for the fourth consecutive quarter with revenue at the higher end of our guidance," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "The quarter capped a year of tremendous progress on Intel's transformation, where we consistently drove execution and accelerated innovation, resulting in strong customer momentum for our products. In 2024, we remain relentlessly focused on achieving process and product leadership, continuing to build our external foundry business and at-scale global manufacturing, and executing our mission to bring AI everywhere as we drive long-term value for stakeholders."

David Zinsner, Intel CFO, said, "We continued to drive operational efficiencies in the fourth quarter, and comfortably achieved our commitment to deliver $3 billion in cost savings in 2023. We expect to unlock further efficiencies in 2024 and beyond as we implement our new internal foundry model, which is designed to drive greater transparency and accountability and higher returns on our owners' capital." For the full year, the company generated $11.5 billion in cash from operations and paid dividends of $3.1 billion.

Intel presented its next generation Xeon "Clearwater Forest" processor family during September's Innovation Event—their roadmap slide (see below) included other Birch Stream platform architecture options. Earlier this week, Team Blue's software engineers issued a Linux kernel patch that contains details pertaining to codenamed projects: Sierra Forest, Grand Ridge and the aforementioned Clearwater Forest. All E-Core Xeon "Sierra Forest" processors are expected to launch around the middle of 2024—this deployment of purely efficiency-oriented "Sierra Glen" (Atom Crestmont) cores in enterprise/server chip form will be a first for Intel. The Sierra Forest Xeon range has been delayed a couple of times; but some extra maturation time has granted a jump from an initial maximum 144 E-Core count up to 288. The latest patch notes provide an early look into Clearwater Forest's basic foundations—it seems to be Sierra Forest's direct successor.

The Intel Xeon "Granite Rapids" processor family is expected to hit retail just after a Sierra Forest product launch, but the former sports a very different internal configuration—an all "Redwood Cove" P-Core setup. Phoronix posits that Sierra Forest's groundwork is clearing the way for its natural successor: "Clearwater Forest is Intel's second generation E-core Xeon...Clearwater Forest should ship in 2025 while the open-source Intel Linux engineers begin in their driver support preparations and other hardware enablement well in advance of launch. With engineers already pushing Sierra Forest code into the Linux kernel and related key open-source projects like Clang and GCC since last year, their work on enabling Sierra Forest appears to be largely wrapping up and in turn the enablement is to begin for Clearwater Forest. Sent out...was the first Linux kernel patch for Sierra Forest. As usual, for the first patch it's quite basic and is just adding in the new model number for Clearwater Forest CPUs. Clear Water Forest has a model number of 0xDD (221). The patch also reaffirms that the 0xDD Clearwater Forest CPUs are using Atom Darkmont cores."

Intel has recently updated its Software Development Emulator (now version 9.33.0)—InstLatX64 noted some intriguing cache designations for Fifth Generation Xeon Scalable Processors. The "Emerald Rapids" family was introduced at last December's "AI Everywhere" event—with sample units released soon after for review. Tom's Hardware was impressed by the Platinum 8592+ CPU's tripled L3 Cache (over the previous generation): "(it) contributed significantly to gains in Artificial Intelligence inference, data center, video encoding, and general compute workloads. While AMD EPYC generally remains the player to beat in the enterprise CPU space, Emerald Rapids marks a significant improvement from Intel's side of that battlefield, especially as it pertains to Artificial Intelligence workloads and multi-core performance in general."

Intel's SDE 9.33.0 update confirms 320 MB of L3 cache for "Emerald Rapids," but the next line down provides a major "Granite Rapids" insight—480 MB of L3 cache, representing a 2.8x leap over the previous generation. Team Blue's 6th Gen (all P-core) Xeon processor series is expected to launch within the latter half of 2024. The American multinational technology company is evidently keen to take on AMD in the enterprise CPU market segment, although Team Red is already well ahead with its current crop of L3 cache designations. EPYC CPUs in Genoa and Genoa-X guises offer maximum totals of 384 MB and 1152 MB (respectively). Intel's recently launched "Emerald Rapids" server chips are observed as being a good match against Team Red EPYC "Bergamo" options.

AEWIN is glad to announce our latest High-Performance Network Appliance powered by Intel latest 5th Gen Xeon Scalable Processors, SCB-1942 Series. It is a series of flagship products powered by dual Intel Emerald Rapids CPUs, having up to 128 CPU cores (64 cores per CPU) for the extreme computing power pursued in the market. SCB-1942 series has multiple SKU with various PCIe slots options for great expandability to fulfill customer's solutions.

The SCB-1942A is a 2U, 2-socket network computing platform having 16x memory socket of DDR5 up to 5600 MHz, and 8x PCIe 5.0 expansion slots for AEWIN wide coverage NIC cards with 1G/10/25/40/100G copper/fiber interfaces or other Accelerators & NVMe SSDs for flexible functionality enhancement. The SCB-1942A provides the flexibility to change the 2x PCIe slots to 1x PCIe x16 slot for standard PCIe form factor which can install off-the-shelf add-on card for additional function required. It can support 400G NIC card installed such as Mellanox PCIe 5.0 NIC. In addition, the SCB-1942 series support 10 SATA which make it also suitable for various kinds of storage applications.

At the CES 2024 international show, Taiwanese company ENERMAX unveiled new all-in-one (AIO) CPU liquid coolers targeting both mainstream and high-end markets. First in line is the AQUAFLO LCD, which features a removable 5-inch 800x480 resolution magnetic LCD display, allowing monitoring of temperatures, fan speeds, and pump RPM, with the ability to stick on cases or use it as a desktop display. Supporting up to 400 Watt TDPs, the dual-chamber pump design provides flow rates up to 450 liters per hour. The 240 mm and 360 mm radiators use flat 20 mm-thick cooling tubes and ENERMAX Shunt Channel cooling technology for efficient heat transfer. This enables handling the latest overclocked gaming CPUs.

For professional workstations and servers, the LIQTECH XTR 280 and 360 models offer full coverage and 500 Watt+ TDP capacity for the latest AMD Threadripper Pro and Intel Xeon CPUs using larger CPU sockets. An integrated 2.4-inch digital OLED screen directly on the block reports real-time core temperature readings and warnings. A ceramic bearing pump design also pushes 450 liters per hour for cooling under heavy rendering or data center workloads. The LIQTECH XTR ensures professionals can rely on enhanced durability for mission-critical hardware. The new AIO coolers will be available in Q2 2024 through major retailers.

EK, the leading liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is announcing the availability of two high-performance liquid cooling solutions for the Intel "Sierra Forest" processor family. EK-Pro CPU WB 7529 and 7529 Rack water blocks are specially designed to cool the Sierra Forest CPUs, a codename for Intel's first-generation E-core Xeon server processors based on the LGA 7529 socket. These CPUs are expected to launch in the first half of 2024 and feature up to 288 cores per socket for 576 cores per server. Naturally, with such a high core count, liquid cooling presents a sensible solution to heat management.

The Sierra Forest architecture design aims to achieve ultra-high core counts for greater compute density that would benefit cloud and HPC server applications. However, with greater compute density comes greater requirements for cooling. Even with the E-cores that use less power per core, their staggering density in the CPU will indeed present unique challenges for traditional air cooling.

According to the latest round of tests by Phoronix, we are seeing proof of substantial performance gains Intel's 5th Gen Xeon Emerald Rapids server CPUs deliver when employing AVX-512 vector instructions. Enabling AVX-512 doubled throughput on average across a range of workloads, with specific AI tasks accelerating over 10x versus having it disabled. Running on the top-end 64-core Platinum 8592+ SKU, benchmarks saw minimal frequency differences between AVX-512 on and off states. However, the specialized 512-bit vector processing unlocked dramatic speedups, exemplified in the OpenVINO AI framework. Specifically, weld porosity detection, which has real-world applications, showed the biggest speedups. Power draw also increased moderately - the expected tradeoff for such an unconstrained performance upside.

With robust optimizations, the vector engine potential has now been fully demonstrated. Workloads spanning AI, visualization, simulation, and analytics could multiply speed by upgrading to Emerald Rapids. Of course, developer implementation work remains non-trivial. But for the data center applications that can take advantage, AVX-512 enables Intel to partially close raw throughput gaps versus AMD's core count leadership. Whether those targeted acceleration gains offset EPYC's wider general-purpose value depends on customer workloads. But with tests proving dramatic upside, Intel is betting big on vector acceleration as its ace card. AMD also supports the AVX-512 instruction set. Below, you can find the geometric mean of all test results, and check the review with benchmarks here.

Intel Corporation today announced the appointment of Justin Hotard as executive vice president and general manager of its Data Center and AI Group (DCAI), effective Feb. 1. He joins Intel with more than 20 years of experience driving transformation and growth in computing and data center businesses, and is a leader in delivering scalable AI systems for the enterprise.

Hotard will become a member of Intel's executive leadership team and report directly to CEO Pat Gelsinger. He will be responsible for Intel's suite of data center products spanning enterprise and cloud, including its Intel Xeon processor family, graphics processing units (GPUs) and accelerators. He will also play an integral role in driving the company's mission to bring AI everywhere.

Chinese chipmaker Montage Technology has unveiled new data center processors under its Jintide brand based on Intel's latest Emerald Rapids Xeon architecture. The 5th generation Jintide lineup offers anywhere from 16-core to 48-core options for enterprise customers needing advanced security specific to China's government and enterprise requirements. Leveraging a long-running joint venture with Intel, Jintide combines standard high-performance Xeon microarchitectures with added on-die monitoring and encryption blocks, PrC (Pre-check) and DSC (Dynamic Security Check), which are security-hardened for sensitive Chinese use cases. The processors retain all core performance attributes of Intel's vanilla offerings thanks to IP access, only with extra protections mandated by national security interests. While missing the very highest core counts, the new Jintide chips otherwise deliver similar Emerald Rapids features like 8-channel DDR5-5600 memory, 80 lanes of speedy PCIe 5.0, and elevated clock speeds over 4.0 GHz at peak. The Jintide processors have 2S scaling, which allows for dual-socket systems with up to 96 cores and 192 threads.

Pricing remains unpublished but likely carries a premium over Intel list prices thanks to the localized security customization required. However, with Jintide uniquely meeting strict Chinese government and data regulations, cost becomes secondary for target customers needing compliant data center hardware. After matching lockstep with Intel's last several leading Xeon generations, Jintide's continued iteration highlights its strategic value in enabling high-performance domestic infrastructure as China eyes IT supply chain autonomy. Intel gets expanded access to the growing Chinese server market, while Chinese partners utilize Intel IP to strengthen localized offerings without foreign dependency. It manifests the delicate balance of advanced chip joint ventures between global tech giants and rising challengers. More details about the SKUs are listed in the table below.

Yesterday, Intel unveiled its latest Xeon data center processors, codenamed Emerald Rapids, delivering the new Xeon Platinum 8592+ flagship SKU with 64 cores and 128 threads. Packed into its fresh silicon, Intel promises boosted performance and reduced power hunger. The comprehensive tech benchmarking website Phoronix essentially confirms Intel's pitch. Testing production servers running the new 8592+ showed solid gains over prior Intel models, let alone older generations still commonplace in data centers. On average, upgrading to the 8592+ increased single-socket server performance by around 23.5% compared to the previous generation configs of Sapphire Rapid, Xeon Platinum 8490H. The dual-socket configuration records a 17% boost in performance.

However, Intel is not in the data center market by itself. AMD's 64-core offering that Xeon Platinum 8592+ is competing with is AMD EPYC 9554. The Emerald Rapids chip is faster by about 2.3%. However, AMD's lineup doesn't stop at only 64 cores. AMD's Genoa and Genoa-X with 3D V-cache top out at 96 cores, while Bergamo goes up to 128 cores. On the power consumption front, the Xeon Platinum 8592+ was pulling about 289 Watts compared to the Xeon Platinum 8490H average of 306 Watts. At peak, the Xeon Platinum 8592+ CPU managed to hit 434 Watts compared to the Xeon Platinum 8490H peak of 469 Watts. This aligns with Intel's claims of enhanced efficiency. However, compared to the 64-core counterpart from AMD, the EPYC 9554 had an average power consumption of 227 Watts and a recorded peak of 369 Watts.

MSI, a leading global server provider, introduces its latest server platforms powered by 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. These platforms showcase remarkable performance per watt improvements across the most demanding workloads, including AI, databases, networking, storage, and HPC.

"Enterprises and organizations face the challenge of reducing their capital and operating expenses, and new technologies like 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors continue to drive changes in the business landscape," said Danny Hsu, General Manager of Enterprise Platform Solutions. "The enhancements in MSI's server platforms empower our customers to meet their requirements while effectively managing increasing workload demands." "5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are designed to accelerate the greatest range of workloads. By optimizing the use of CPU core resources, built-in accelerators deliver more efficient utilization and power efficiency advantages, helping businesses achieve their performance and sustainability goals," said Suzi Jewett, General Manager of 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, at Intel.

GIGABYTE Technology: Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in high-performance servers and IT infrastructure, is thrilled to present a cutting-edge series of servers optimized for the newly launched Intel Xeon E-2400 processors. These servers deliver essential computing power, ensuring a dependable workload for a wide range of enterprise and edge computing applications, all while maintaining an impressive price-to-performance ratio.

"We are thrilled to unveil our latest server product line, which is engineered to deliver unparalleled performance and reliability," said Vincent Wang, sales VP at Giga Computing. "By leveraging the power of the new Intel Xeon E processors, our servers empower businesses to elevate their computational capabilities, enabling them to achieve greater efficiency and productivity. Whether it's for enterprise applications or edge computing tasks, GIGABYTE servers are the cornerstone of innovation in the digital landscape." ⁠

TYAN, a leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced upgraded server platforms and motherboards based on the brand-new 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, formerly codenamed Emerald Rapids.

5th Gen Intel Xeon processor has increased to 64 cores, featuring a larger shared cache, higher UPI and DDR5 memory speed, as well as PCIe 5.0 with 80 lanes. Growing and excelling with workload-optimized performance, 5th Gen Intel Xeon delivers more compute power and faster memory within the same power envelope as the previous generation. "5th Gen Intel Xeon is the second processor offering inside the 2023 Intel Xeon Scalable platform, offering improved performance and power efficiency to accelerate TCO and operational efficiency", said Eric Kuo, Vice President of Server Infrastructure Business Unit, MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation. "By harnessing the capabilities of Intel's new Xeon CPUs, TYAN's 5th-Gen Intel Xeon-supported solutions are designed to handle the intense demands of HPC, data centers, and AI workloads.

At its "AI Everywhere" launch in New York City today, Intel introduced an unmatched portfolio of AI products to enable customers' AI solutions everywhere—across the data center, cloud, network, edge and PC. "AI innovation is poised to raise the digital economy's impact up to as much as one-third of global gross domestic product," Gelsinger said. "Intel is developing the technologies and solutions that empower customers to seamlessly integrate and effectively run AI in all their applications—in the cloud and, increasingly, locally at the PC and edge, where data is generated and used."

Gelsinger showcased Intel's expansive AI footprint, spanning cloud and enterprise servers to networks, volume clients and ubiquitous edge environments. He also reinforced that Intel is on track to deliver five new process technology nodes in four years. "Intel is on a mission to bring AI everywhere through exceptionally engineered platforms, secure solutions and support for open ecosystems. Our AI portfolio gets even stronger with today's launch of Intel Core Ultra ushering in the age of the AI PC and AI-accelerated 5th Gen Xeon for the enterprise," Gelsinger said.

Today at the "AI Everywhere" event, Intel launched its 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors (code-named Emerald Rapids) that deliver increased performance per watt and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) across critical workloads for artificial intelligence, high performance computing (HPC), networking, storage, database and security. This launch marks the second Xeon family upgrade in less than a year, offering customers more compute and faster memory at the same power envelope as the previous generation. The processors are software- and platform-compatible with 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors, allowing customers to upgrade and maximize the longevity of infrastructure investments while reducing costs and carbon emissions.

"Designed for AI, our 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors provide greater performance to customers deploying AI capabilities across cloud, network and edge use cases. As a result of our long-standing work with customers, partners and the developer ecosystem, we're launching 5th Gen Intel Xeon on a proven foundation that will enable rapid adoption and scale at lower TCO." -Sandra Rivera, Intel executive vice president and general manager of Data Center and AI Group.

Intel's upcoming Sierra Forest Xeon server chip has debuted on Geekbench 6, showcasing its potential in multi-core performance. Slated for release in the first half of 2024, Sierra Forest is equipped with up to 288 Efficiency cores, positioning it to compete with AMD's Zen 4c Bergamo server CPUs and other ARM-based server chips like those from Ampere for the favor of cloud service providers (CSP). In the Geekbench 6 benchmark, a dual-socket configuration featuring two 144-core Sierra Forest CPUs was tested. The benchmark revealed a notable multi-core score of 7,770, surpassing most dual-socket systems powered by Intel's high-end Xeon Platinum 8480+, which typically scores between 6,500 and 7,500. However, Sierra Forest's single-core score of 855 points was considerably lower, not even reaching half of that of the 8480+, which manages 1,897 points.

The difference in single-core performance is a matter of choice, as Sierra Forest uses Crestmont-derived Sierra Glen E-cores, which are more power and area-efficient, unlike the Golden Cove P-cores in the Sapphire Rapids-based 8480+. This design choice is particularly advantageous for server environments where high-core counts are crucial, as CSPs usually partition their instances by the number of CPU cores. However, compared to AMD's Bergamo CPUs, which use Zen 4c cores, Sierra Forest lacks pure computing performance, especially in multi-core. The Sierra Forest lacks hyperthreading, while Bergaamo offers SMT with 256 threads on the 128-core SKU. Comparing the Geekbench 6 scores to AMD Bergamo EPYC 9754 and Sierra Forest results look a lot less impressive. Bergamo scored 1,597 points in single-core, almost double that of Sierra Forest, and 16,455 points in the multi-core benchmarks, which is more than double. This is a significant advantage of the Zen 4c core, which cuts down on caches instead of being an entirely different core, as Intel does with its P and E-cores. However, these are just preliminary numbers; we must wait for real-world benchmarks to see the actual performance.

Thanks to the leaked slides obtained by @InstLatX64, we have more details and some performance estimates about Intel's upcoming 5th Generation Xeon "Emerald Rapids" CPUs, boasting a significant performance leap over its predecessors. Leading the Emerald Rapids family is the top-end SKU, the Xeon 8592+, which features 64 cores and 128 threads, backed by a massive 480 MB L3 cache pool. The upcoming lineup shifts from a 4-tile to a 2-tile design to minimize latency and improve performance. The design utilizes the P-Core architecture under the Raptor Cove ISA and promises up to 40% faster performance than the current 4th Generation "Sapphire Rapids" CPUs in AI applications utilizing Intel AMX engine. Each chiplet has 35 cores, three of which are disabled, and each tile has two DDR5-5600 MT/s memory controllers, which operate two memory channels each and translating that into eight-channel design. There are three PCIe controllers per die, making it six in total.

Newer protocols and AI accelerators also back the upcoming lineup. Now, the Emerald Rapids family supports the Compute Express Link (CXL) Types 1/2/3 in addition to up to 80 PCIe Gen 5 lanes and enhanced Intel Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI). There are four UPI controllers spread over two dies. Moreover, features like the four on-die Intel Accelerator Engines, optimized power mode, and up to 17% improvement in general-purpose workloads make it seem like a big step up from the current generation. Much of this technology is found on the existing Sapphire Rapids SKUs, with the new generation enhancing the AI processing capability further. You can see the die configuration below. The 5th Generation Emerald Rapids designs are supposed to be official on December 14th, just a few days away.