Announced a few years ago, Intel finally unveiled Ice Lake, its new 3rd generation 10-nanometer Xeon Scalable processor , which offers up to 40 cores per socket, forming the basis of Intel's data center platform.
Intel says all leading cloud service providers will offer Ice Lake-based services. For the launch of this chip, more than 50 equipment manufacturers have already built more than 250 servers based on this platform. It is designed for workloads that span a wide range of markets (cloud, network, etc.).
This new line of third-generation Ice Lake Xeon processors, based on their 10nm process , have up to 40 cores and are designed only for single and dual socket systems, competing in a market where other x86 and Arm options are available.
In fact, this launch comes at a crucial time , as the data center market is becoming increasingly competitive, with AMD eyeing Intel's overwhelming market share, while Intel's customers are building their own chips.
Meanwhile, after a series of delays to its product roadmap, CEO Pat Gelsinger, who took over the company in January, has contracted Intel "on a steady cadence of cutting-edge products" using both its own manufacturing and external manufacturing.
With this new generation of scalable Xeon processors (ICX or ICL-SP), Intel's offering has two specific objectives: first, the change of generation compared to the 2nd generation, but also the sale of a solution instead of a simple processor .
"The third-generation Xeon platform is the most flexible and efficient in our history," Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Platforms Group, said in a statement Tuesday. This generation of Xeon Scalable, Intel's first at 10nm, uses a newer architecture, the Sunny Cove core. According to Intel, the benefits of Sunny Cove start with a 20% increase in raw performance, thanks to a much larger core with an improved front-end and more runtime resources.
Regarding the characteristics and specifications of the new processor:
- The platform supports up to six terabytes of system memory per socket, up to eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory per socket, and up to 64 lanes of PCIe Gen4 per socket.
- Memory bandwidth is improved by increasing memory channels from six to eight, but also through new memory pre-recovery techniques and optimizations that increase bandwidth up to 100% performance with an additional efficiency of more than 25%.
- The mesh interconnect between cores also uses updated algorithms to feed I / O to and from the cores. Additionally, Intel promotes better power management through independent power management agents within each IP block.
- Besides that, Intel is adding acceleration features, stating that beyond raw performance, software optimized for these accelerators will benefit from a greater improvement than the previous generation. It starts with the basic design of the kernel, especially when it comes to SIMD commands like SSSE, AVX, AVX2, and AVX-512. Intel enables better encryption support through its ISA, allowing AES, SHA, GFNI, and other instructions to run simultaneously on all vector instruction sets.
According to Intel, the VX-512 improves frequencies during more complex binary operations for ICX with smarter mapping between instructions and power consumption, providing 10% higher frequencies for all 256-bit instructions. This is complemented by Intel's speed selection technologies, such as performance profiles, base frequency boosts, turbo frequency boosts, and core power support, to ensure maximum per-core performance or quality of service during intensive system use, depending on customer needs.
Other new features include Software Guard Extensions , which allows enclave sizes of up to 512 GB per socket on some models.
"Intel is uniquely positioned in architecture, design and manufacturing to provide the spectrum of silicon and smart solutions our customers demand," said Shenoy. Finally, Intel explains that compared to the previous generation, Ice Lake offers an average 46% increase in performance on popular data center workloads. Includes Intel DL Boost for AI acceleration.
Source: https://www.intel.com