[ad_1]
The pace of the Intel enterprise processor portfolio is designed to help customers who use the hardware with socket and platform support for at least three years. Therefore, we usually have two lots of CPUs per socket: Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, Broadwell and Haswell, and now Cascade Lake joins Skylake. The new Intel Xeon Scalable (official name) is still in the new Platinum / Gold / Silver / Bronze nomenclature, but this time offers up to 56 cores if you want the Wolverine processor equivalent. Intel offers not only more cores, but also Optane, faster DRAMs, new configurations and better specialization than before. Intel has also surprised us with hardware support that exceeds expectations for Spectrum and Meltdown mitigation solutions, while delivering consistently better overall performance.
Processor evolution: growing eyes and limbs
Updating a portfolio of processors is a complex problem. There are obvious improvements that a business can aim for: more performance, better efficiency, lower energy consumption. Then there are less obvious improvements that could be customer-specific: support for new instructions, layered ecosystem optimizations, support for new technologies, or new product orientation. The focus on Intel's new, second-generation Enterprise Xeon scalable processors, known as Cascade Lake, is becoming more and more interested in the latter.
Cascade Lake builds on a Skylake foundation by enhancing secondary features that often take a back seat to a standard product ad. The cynic in the room might suggest that since the microarchitecture is identical to the previous generation, there is no improvement, but Intel has expanded its offering by focusing on product implementations, developing special features for emerging markets, enhancing security and, for those adventurous. enough, put two high-performance processors in one package. By improving the periphery of the product and the ecosystem, a new generation is born.
What does it mean in reality? What characteristics have changed? Here is a list of chips that we will detail in more detail.
- Most mid-range processors have more hearts for the same price
- The frequency has increased in almost all processors
- L3 has risen in most midrange processors
- Faster DDR4 is supported
- More DRAM memory is supported on the stack
- Optane DRAM is supported on almost all Gold / Platinum SKUs
- New optimized CPU configurations for specific markets
- Speed Select technology for cloud deployments
- New Platinum 9200 family of 'Cascade Lake-AP', up to 56 cores and 400W per base
- Improved spectrum and fusion attenuation
- New VNNI AVX-512 Instructions for Emerging Workloads
Each of these has its own story and shows that building a family of processors must rely on an important ecosystem to succeed. Speaking with Intel, and with AMD and Arm, business users are very different from ten years ago: they want products customized and optimized specifically for them, and not so much the generic part of trade. They are willing to invest more in a product suited to their market, or if they want something special, which is not in line with the roadmap. All businesses in this space are turning to their customers, either to provide them with the product they want, or to create the ecosystem they need as their own workload evolves.
Cascade Lake: Naming and Upgrades!
With the silicon that enterprise users will want to buy, Intel retains its Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze designations for the second generation. What's new in the stack is the Platinum 9200 family, which is based on higher-core BGA models for high-density deployments, as well as a range of new suffixes and letters to help identify certain differentiated products.
The letters are as follows:
- No letter = Normal memory support (1.5 TB)
- M = medium memory support (2.0 TB)
- L = Large memory capacity (4.5 TB)
- Y = Speed selection models (see below)
- N = specialized network / NFV
- V = Density value of the optimized virtual machine
- T = long / thermal life cycle
- S = Optimized search
Users familiar with the letters of the first generation of Xeon Scalable will notice one of the missing letters: F. F was Intel's letter for SKUs with added OmniPath Fabric. Intel said it would not manufacture matrix processors for this new generation, which perhaps shows how popular it was.
Among the new letter configurations, users will notice that the letterless designation now supports 1.5 TB of memory, double the first generation. This goes up to 2TB for M, and 4.5TB for L. These values include parts equipped with Optane, and as such, an "L" CPU can support 3.0TB Optane plus 1.5 TB of DDR4 memory, to give 4.5 total TB. Excluding M / L designation, M looks strange at 2.0 TB, especially for a processor with six memory channels. Indeed, there are a number of motherboards on the market in a "2 + 1 + 1" configuration, which corresponds to the number of DIMMs on each side of the processor. "2 + 1 + 1" means that on each side there is a memory channel with two DIMMs, one with a DIMM and another with a DIMM. That's eight per socket, which yields 2.0 TB divided by eight, or 256 GB per DIMM slot. Almost confusing.
Among the other letters, these mainly refer to optimizations for each processor with respect to adjustments in the number of cores, frequency, power, manufacturing (for high thermal parts) and price. The amazing thing here is the "Y" Speed Select model, which refers to a new Intel feature that we will discuss later.
Overall, the changes to processors between the first and second generations are as follows:
| Intel Xeon Scalable | |||||
| 2nd generation Cascade Lake |
AnandTech | 1st generation Skylake-SP |
|||
| April 2019 | Released | July 2017 | |||
| [8200] Up to 28 [9200] Up to 56 |
The kernels | [8100] Up to 28 | |||
| 1 MB L2 per heart Up to 38.5 MB of shared L3 |
Hidden | 1 MB L2 per heart Up to 38.5 MB of shared L3 |
|||
| Up to 48 lanes | PCIe 3.0 | Up to 48 lanes | |||
| Six channels Up & # 39; to DDR4-2933 1.5 TB Standard |
DRAM support | Six channels Up & # 39; to DDR4-2666 768 GB standard |
|||
| Up to 4.5TB per processor | Optane support | – | |||
| AVX-512 VNNI with INT8 | Vector calculation | AVX-512 | |||
| Variant 2, 3, 3a, 4, and L1TF |
Spectrum / fusion Patches |
– | |||
| [8200] Up to 205 W [9200] Up to 400 W |
TDP | Up to 205 W | |||
Cascade Lake supports Optane, DDR4-2933 (two DIMMs per channel), better Spectrum / Meltdown support, new VNNI instructions, and the new 9200 family of processors. Now we're going to review the exact processors SKUs, start with the new 9200 family.
Lake-AP Waterfall: Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 Family
Intel had previously announced plans to create a new, high-performance, high-density computing platform. We had covered the initial announcement of last November, which showed that Intel was placing two of the main silicon matrices of its big company in a silicon case, to create something with two cores and a memory twice as small as 'a double socket system. According to Intel, this product has been designed to be purely focused on this high density computing market, where space is limited. The company said that when HPC previously had two processors, they could now have the equivalent of four.
Intel now has a name for this family of products: the Xeon Platinum 9200 family. Intel will offer three components. If the company had previously announced that it would offer up to 48 cores in a single package, it would now offer 56, with the top TDP up to 400W. These processors are only BGA and will only be sold as core Intel server designs by Intel through OEMs. OEMs can optimize the design as they wish, for example by offering four blades in a 2U version or alternating cooling between air and liquid. However, the motherboard / processor configurations will be corrected by Intel.
| Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 Family (Cascade Lake AP) |
||||||
| AnandTech | The kernels | Based Freq |
Turbo Freq |
L3 Hidden |
TDP | Price |
| Platinum 9282 | 56 C / 112 T | 2.6 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 77.0 MB | 400 W | arms |
| Platinum 9242 | 48 C / 96 T | 2.3 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 71.5 MB | 350 W | leg |
| Platinum 9222 | 32 C / 64 T | 2.3 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 71.5 MB | 250W | foot |
| Platinum 9221 | 32 C / 64 T | 2.1 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 71.5 MB | 250W | kidney |
Each CPU will have 40 PCIe 3.0 channels and support twelve memory channels up to DDR4-2933. Intel does not think that this type of high density calculation is intended for installations related to calculation and not to memory. There is reason to believe that some installations will not even have all slots for memory channels or will have only one DIMM per channel.
Given the layout of the UPI links in this diagram, what Intel offers its customers is essentially a way to create a super dense equivalent of a four-socket system. Only with a single connector, the processor will behave as a dual connector system based on poor communication. We are therefore seeing the interest of the 9200 family in double-connector designs.
Intel will not issue an official price for these processors because they are only BGA and sold to OEMs as systems, not parts. We try to get one to review.
Intel Platinum 8200, Gold 6200, Gold 5100, Silver 4200 and Bronze 3200
Other processors in the Intel stack follow the nomenclature and vary in number of cores (up to 28), frequency (up to 4.0 GHz), TDP (up to 205W), and N3 cache (up to 38.5 MB). The list of raw processors is as follows:
| Intel second generation Xeon scalable family (Cascade Lake) |
||||||||
| The kernels | Based Freq |
Turbo Freq |
L3 Hidden |
TDP (W) |
Optane | Price | ||
| Xeon Platinum 8200 | ||||||||
| 8280 | The | 28 | 2.7 | 4.0 | 38.50 | 205 | Yes | ? |
| 8280 | M | 28 | 2.7 | 4.0 | 38.50 | 205 | Yes | ? |
| 8280 | 28 | 2.7 | 4.0 | 38.50 | 205 | Yes | $ 10009 | |
| 8276 | The | 28 | 2.2 | 4.0 | 38.50 | 165 | Yes | ? |
| 8276 | M | 28 | 2.2 | 4.0 | 28.50 | 165 | Yes | ? |
| 8276 | 28 | 2.2 | 4.0 | 38.50 | 165 | Yes | $ 8719 | |
| 8270 | 26 | 2.7 | 4.0 | 25.75 | 205 | Yes | $ 7405 | |
| 8268 | 24 | 2.9 | 3.9 | 35.75 | 205 | Yes | $ 6302 | |
| 8260 | The | 24 | 2.4 | 3.9 | 25.75 | 165 | Yes | ? |
| 8260 | M | 24 | 2.4 | 3.9 | 25.75 | 165 | Yes | ? |
| 8260 | 24 | 2.4 | 3.9 | 25.75 | 165 | Yes | $ 4702 | |
| 8260 | Y | 24 | 2.4 | 3.9 | 35.75 | 165 | Yes | $ 5320 |
| 8256 | 24 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 16.50 | 105 | Yes | $ 7007 | |
| 8253 | The | 16 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 35.75 | 165 | Yes | ? |
| 8253 | M | 16 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 35.75 | 165 | Yes | ? |
| 8253 | 16 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 35.75 | 165 | Yes | $ 3115 | |
| Xeon Gold 6200 | ||||||||
| 6262 | V | 24 | 1.9 | 3.6 | 33.00 | 135 | Yes | $ 2900 |
| 6254 | 18 | 3.1 | 4.0 | 24.75 | 200 | Yes | $ 3803 | |
| 6252 | 24 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 35.75 | 150 | Yes | $ 3665 | |
| 6252 | NOT | 24 | 2.3 | 3.6 | 35.75 | 150 | Yes | $ 3984 |
| 6248 | 20 | 2.5 | 3.9 | 27.50 | 150 | Yes | $ 3072 | |
| 6244 | 8 | 3.6 | 4.4 | 24.75 | 150 | Yes | $ 2925 | |
| 6242 | 16 | 2.8 | 3.9 | 22.00 | 150 | Yes | $ 2529 | |
| 6240 | The | 18 | 2.6 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 150 | Yes | ? |
| 6240 | M | 18 | 2.6 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 150 | Yes | ? |
| 6240 | 18 | 2.6 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 150 | Yes | $ 2445 | |
| 6240 | Y | 18 | 2.6 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 150 | Yes | $ 2726 |
| 6238 | The | 22 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 30.25 | 140 | Yes | ? |
| 6238 | M | 22 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 30.25 | 140 | Yes | ? |
| 6238 | 22 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 30.25 | 140 | Yes | $ 2612 | |
| 6238 | T | 22 | 1.9 | 3.7 | 30.25 | 125 | Yes | $ 2742 |
| 6234 | 8 | 3.3 | 4.0 | 24.75 | 130 | Yes | $ 2214 | |
| 6230 | 20 | 2.1 | 3.9 | 27.50 | 125 | Yes | $ 1894 | |
| 6230 | NOT | 20 | 2.3 | 3.5 | 27.50 | 125 | Yes | $ 2046 |
| 6230 | T | 20 | 2.1 | 3.9 | 27.50 | 125 | Yes | $ 1988 |
| 6226 | 12 | 2.8 | 3.7 | 7:25 p.m. | 125 | Yes | $ 1776 | |
| 6222 | V | 20 | 1.8 | 3.6 | 27.50 | 115 | Yes | $ 1600 |
| Xeon Gold 5200 | ||||||||
| 5222 | 4 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 16.50 | 105 | Yes | $ 1221 | |
| 5220 | 18 | 2.2 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 125 | Yes | $ 1555 | |
| 5220 | T | 18 | 2.2 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 105 | Yes | $ 1727 |
| 5220 | S | 18 | 2.7 | 3.9 | 24.75 | 125 | Yes | $ 2000 |
| 5218 | 16 | 2.3 | 3.9 | 22.00 | 125 | Yes | $ 1273 | |
| 5218 | NOT | 16 | 2.3 | 3.9 | 22.00 | 105 | Yes | $ 1375 |
| 5217 | 8 | 3.0 | 3.7 | 16.50 | 115 | Yes | $ 1522 | |
| 5215 | The | ten | 2.5 | 3.4 | 16.50 | 85 | Yes | ? |
| 5215 | M | ten | 2.5 | 3.4 | 16.50 | 85 | Yes | ? |
| 5215 | ten | 2.5 | 3.4 | 16.50 | 85 | Yes | $ 1221 | |
| Xeon Silver 4200 | ||||||||
| 4216 | 16 | 2.1 | 3.2 | 16.50 | 100 | – | $ 1002 | |
| 4215 | 8 | 2.5 | 3.5 | 16.50 | 85 | Yes | $ 794 | |
| 4214 | 12 | 2.2 | 3.2 | 16.50 | 85 | – | $ 694 | |
| 4214 | Y | 12 | 2.2 | 3.2 | 16.50 | 85 | – | $ 768 |
| 4210 | ten | 2.2 | 3.2 | 13.75 | 85 | – | $ 501 | |
| 4209 | T | 8 | 2.2 | 3.2 | 11.00 | 70 | – | $ 501 |
| 4208 | 8 | 2.1 | 3.2 | 11.00 | 85 | – | $ 417 | |
| Xeon Bronze 3200 | ||||||||
| 3204 | 6 | 1.9 | – | 8.25 | 85 | – | $ 213 | |
It can be difficult to distinguish why one processor is better than another; However, one of the best examples of how Intel has redesigned the battery comes with the Xeon Gold 6200 family, which is one of Intel's most popular prizes.
In the same MSRP, Intel offers one of the solutions offered at the same price: either a higher frequency or more cores. As a result, we are going to see a lot of cases where Intel and its customers claim to offer "25 to 40% better performance!" – this will be the case in terms of performance per dollar, but the performances The basic performance for a processor with this number of nuclei will only be improved by adjusting the frequency. Intel and its partners will not stop promoting the fact that they offer a better performance proposition per dollar, although it is not always obvious that gross performance per clock has not changed.
Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory: Real DRAM or RAMDisk?
The only thing that will ever give me nightmares is (insert an echo microphone) "The Pyramid of Optane!". This is the pattern that Intel brings out in every event where you have to talk about optan. I'm dreaming now of this pyramid.
Intel's new Optane technology is split into two segments, reducing the gap between DRAM and storage. In the storage product, it is a competitor of the NAND 3D, but with a high capacity, low capacity storage layer that uses NVMe. In the memory product, this is a DDR4 form factor that offers a high capacity alternative that is slightly slower than DRAM. With Intel's new Cascade Lake processors, it now supports the new version of Optane compatible with DDR4 memory.
Intel is promoting the persistent Optane DC (official name) memory in two ways.
First of all, it's a way to add a lot more memory to the system at a slightly lower speed. With high-memory-capable processors, users can add up to 3.0 TB of Optane DCPMM to 1.5 TB of DDR4, giving 4.5 TB of total memory per socket. In this configuration, the DDR4 acts as a buffer / store in front of Optane, which masks some of the increased latency, but this ultimately means that larger databases in memory can be used per socket.
Second, as a persistent memory store. Intel prefers to cite the moment when a system reboots and has to reload all its NVMe data into main memory. With persistent memory, the data is already present, as a storage device, which can reduce the idle time of the database loading from forty to four minutes, greatly reducing the time of 39, inactivity of a warm restart.
For companies that actually use Optane, the system can view it in two different ways: in memory mode or in direct mode. In memory mode, the Optane simply integrates into DDR4 memory, so there seems to be a lot more DRAM in the system. In this mode, it is very easy to see the benefits of simply having more memory. In App Direct mode, the Optane is actually mounted as a storage device, but with the performance of a RAM disk. In order to take advantage of this mode, it may be necessary to rethink the software to be able to use this additional storage as a device.
Sending to OEMs, they expect customers who need a large database storage to be the first to acquire Optane, as it is easier to effectively depreciate. the extended memory footprint. The "App Direct" mode of the virtual disk will take longer to complete.
Intel will offer Optane in modules of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Thanks to its operation, up to six Optane modules can be installed per socket (with at least one DDR4 module as well). Intel has announced that it will not publish a price for Optane at the moment. To do this, Optane-based solutions should be globally available in June.
Cascade Lake: more than just Moore (same)
If I were to be frank, then I would say that at a very high level, the new Cascade Lake processor family is basically an update of the Skylake Xeon Scalable processors from the previous generation. This is the same basic microarchitecture, with some memory increases or a number-of-hearts adjustment, and a cynic may indicate that the processor's raw performance per clock does not change. If Intel only launches a processor, I may agree with you, but these corporate launches are now more CPU support than the raw performance itself. Features such as Optane, coupled with increased security and new items in the product portfolio, push Cascade Lake above "just another launch."
One of the big questions will be whether Intel can compete with 28 cores in 14 nm while AMD is ready to deploy 64 cores in 7 nm, and how performance will differ. One of the smart things that Intel has done as part of this contest is to divert the debate by simply citing the key figures and to help create a platform around its product. . AMD is smart, they will do exactly the same thing and get ready to launch 64 hearts later this year. This will make an interesting battle.
For users who expect a full review of Intel's Cascade Lake launch today, the delay between launching the sample and launching was unfortunately too short to bring anything together. Johan and I are currently working on several ideas, in addition to testing Optane, to bring you a complete review as soon as it is ready. It will probably take at least a few weeks, but we have exciting content to come. Stay tuned!
[ad_2]
Source link