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Intel Launches Xeon Scalable CPUs: Dual Xeon Platinum 8176, 112 Threads Tested (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Intel announced its new Xeon Scalable processor family based on the 14nm Skylake-SP microarchitecture a few weeks back, though today marks the official launch of the platform. Not only do these processors feature a new microarchitecture, but Intel has also revamped the naming convention and arrangement of the Xeon product stack, branding them with Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze model families. Intel Xeon Scalable series processors feature core counts ranging from 4 to 28, with varied frequencies and cache configurations. Workstation processors and lower-core count server chips top out in the 3.2GHz -- 3.6GHz range, while the higher-core count products typically fall in the 2GHz -- 2.7GHz range. Six memory channels are supported and the chips have 48 lanes of integrated PCIe 3.0 connectivity. Power envelopes range all the way from 70W on up to 205W. The Xeon Scalable series also introduces new security, virtualization, and storage-related features, more memory bandwidth, support for AVX-512 extensions, a mesh interconnect, and enhanced hardware controlled power management, among a host of other architectural improvements. Testing of a 2P Xeon Platinum 8176 system, sporting 56 physical cores / 112 threads shows significantly increased performance and bandwidth, with only moderately higher power consumption versus a previous-gen 2P Xeon E5-2679 v4-based system.
8176+112=8288. nerd stuff.
Too old a joke? Anyone? Anyone? This thing on?
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
Very expensive (the top one is $11722) and very fragmented portfolio. There actually is a review comparing one of the top Xeon Platinums 8176 ($8719) to the AMD EPYC 7601 (4200$) - http://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade
The results might be surprising and speak of desperation in pushing the Core-derived architectures too far. Another indicator is the recent HEDT platform's problems on Tom's Hardware - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/-intel-skylake-x-overclocking-thermal-issues,5117.html
Not to mention another security nightmare on the level of Intel ME/AMT:
"The chipset will also include a new feature called Intel’s Innovation Engine, giving a small embedded core into the PCH which mirrors Intel’s Management Engine but is designed for system-builders and integrators. This allows specialist firmware to manage some of the capabilities of the system on top of Intel’s ME, and is essentially an Intel Quark x86 core with 1.4MB SRAM."
Because we all know the motherboard manufacturers are known for stable and secure code, so let's let them botch yet another thing.
It's high time AMD kicked Intel's butt into actually trying and not milking their customers constantly.
Will it have *scalable* prices as well? Like they tried last time where if you wanted an additional feature turned on you had to pay more for it?
Backdoors they baked into the dies this time.
Threads, system buses
It's time for networked processors (not ethernet)
You give each processor its own memory space with a large amount of the space dedicated to its own private ram. Other sections of this memory space can intersect the memory space of a set of neighboring processors, shared ram. Get rid of the cashing and swapping and thrashing. Extremely complex operations can pipeline from processor space to processor space. One could make Neural networks, Function networks, Data flow programs as they wish. Have thousands of these processors. Note this is not the same as the single instruction multiple data (SIMD) GPUs being hoisted on us right now.
i swear there was, because intel is shaking in their boots in their mad rush to beat amd to the punch with the next versions of processors.
and really shitty for everyone else who runs servers on a reasonable budget. It still appears AMD is going to take the server market.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Read up on the AS/400 architecture. Makes much more sense than the 8088 kludge we've had for decades.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
how do the amd EPYC systems hold up?
With Intel you need 3 cpus to get the same pci-e as 1 amd.
Also that 1 AMD cpu has more ram channels then 1 intel cpu.
software Virtual (AKA fake) RAID for pci-e?? does that only work with intel pci-e ssd? and does it work with drives behind pci-e switches? hot swap?
At least AMD gives you the pci-e lanes to do a system with lot's of pci-e storage and stuff like ZFS / CEPH / etc works good with storage in HBA mode not with all kinds of overhead like JBOD or 1 disk raid 0 setups.
The overall takeaway is that the AMD system is faster in a lot of workloads (databases being the one big notable area where it loses badly) than the Intel system and at a much lower cost.
Databases are what the Big Iron servers live to support so AMD losing badly against Skylake on that front means they've lost the sales war. Web servers are databases, order processing systems are databases, pretty much everything that's computationally intensive has a database or six on the backend.
High Performance Computing (HPC) is shiny and prominent but the sales are limited and a lot of new HPC kit is based around non-CPU computation elements derived from GPUs rather than general-purpose CPUs so even good performance in that area won't save AMD in the datacentre markets.
With 112 threads, can you compile Chrome ans still use the mouse in Windows 10?
... build Chrome.
Moreover, the problem gets worse the more cores you have.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This naming shift gives me the major heebs. It can't possibly be designed to aid comprehension. It's the end of an era, for sure.
I'd buy AMD almost for that reason alone, once I'm sure AMD is solid in the ZFS camp (the story there has been spotty for some while).
But more likely, I'll run my current dual E5-2620 NAS convergence box into the dirt (I figure on another five to seven years) and by then I'll get a turnkey NAS appliance for local bulk storage and everything else I've got will migrate into the cloud, where no-one cares what is under the hood, so long as $/mile is priced competitively.
1959 planar process
1963 complementary MOS
2017 bronze, silver, gold, and platinum
58 good years, RIP. Apparently, the generation who grew up on cherry iMacs are procuring cloud servers these days.
Turns out, the King Midas story is a bit oversimplified for young audiences. While he didn't grow hair on his palms, he did wind up with a mixed bag and the ultimate shiner (as you'd pretty much expect when a royal figure is granted his wish by an androgynous saint to the oppressed who wanders about waving a thyrsus).
Heh. People are a fickle bunch. Go back not that many months ago when AMD was on the ropes and everyone was predicting their demise, not to mention all the praise for Intel CPUs and how one would be a fool to stick with AMD. People were leaving in droves, AMD fans, and Intel fanboys arm in arm. Fast forward and now people are badmouthing the former posterboy because there's now some competition. Heaven help AMD if all the usual bench-marking and review places suddenly find something wrong because the praise-a-thon crowd will flip-flop faster than a politician.