RedShark News – Intel has announced a monstrous Xeon 56-core processor



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Now that the Intel 10nm production is finally starting to increase, it is starting to market its new products.

First, new processors. Intel has announced Cascade Lake, a new line of Xeon processors. The main improvements concern more cores and memory channels. The new expected upper limit was 48 multithreaded cores and 12 DDR4 2933 memory channels, but Intel added an even more powerful model with 56 cores and 112 threads. Add to that a massive 77 MB L3 cache, 40 PCIe lanes and a maximum clock speed of 3.8 GHz. You will understand why it is rated at 400 watts.

These new flagship models also support two socket configurations; yes, that means 112 cores, 244 threads and 24 memory channels.

Intel did not provide pricing information, but since these will only be available through integrators, do not expect them to be cheap, especially since the next downgrade , the SP line starts at $ 10,009. Of the 60 models announced, the first floor has 28 cores and 56 threads, 38.5 MB of L3 cache and a 4.0 GHz turbo clock speed for a consumption of 205 watts. The three entries in this release support 1.5 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB of memory, respectively.

Since these start at $ 10,000, the new Advanced Performance line will likely carry stratospheric price tags.

Compared to the current range, improvements include increased memory capacity and Vector Neural Network Instructions (VNNI) support, as well as hardware fixes for the Specter and Meltdown attacks.

Optane

Finally, this announcement finally brings Optane, Intel's XPoint 3D memory, to the market, allowing large memory configurations by taking advantage of Optane DIMMs exceeding 512 GB. Currently, Optane must coexist with DDR, essentially using the DDR memory as a cache, almost as if the Optane DIMMs were only very fast physical storage devices. Even though it is not yet the huge and super fast memory we were hoping for, but it is an important step in that direction.

Being a persistent memory technology, one of Optane's main concerns is its longevity. To answer this question, Intel provides a five-year warranty on Optane DIMMs.

For the moment, Optane is probably beyond the reach of most content creators, but as it matures, it will reach affordable levels, allowing post offices and small production companies to staff their workstations. hundreds of GB of memory in the near future.

The next announcement of the processor is also data center oriented, but it definitely caught my eye: it is the new Agilex FPGA. For those unfamiliar with this term, a user-programmable gate array is essentially a processor that can be reconfigured in the field, essentially converting it into a dedicated processor. These are common in today's cameras and allow companies such as Black Magic to add entirely new codecs and features after launch.

The Agilex is interesting for several reasons.

The first is the FTLOP 40 computing power. To put this into perspective, remember that AMD's Radeon VII graphics processor peaks at 13.5 TFLOPS; Obviously, Agilex has the computing power it needs. The multitude of options taking advantage of Intel's EMIB technology is also interesting, like the 4 ARM Cortex A53 cores, the choice of PCIe 4 or 5, the support of the DDR 4 or 5, as well as the Optane memory. , or high bandwidth memory (HBM). It can also have consistent interconnections in cache memory to integrate with Xeon SP processors.

The new Xeons are a technological showcase, but it will be equally interesting to see how AMD meets the SP range. The Agilex is the most intriguing of Intel's ads, both by its power and by the fact that it can be programmed to do just about anything.

The problem is of course that the price tag is not clear, but Intel has shown time and time again that it is very good to offer a very advanced technology at affordable levels and huge volumes. the processor could work as a red rocket, implement de-Bayering and image processing in a custom processor for the task

For the moment, it is very likely that it is out of reach, but if AMD continues to run, Intel could be encouraged to use such a beast to regain a competitive advantage.

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