The largest processor set ever designed by Intel

When Intel announced the official launch of the new Cascade Lake family last week, it added a new product segment to its portfolio: the 'Advanced Performance' or AP. They come in the form of the Xeon Platinum 9200 family and incorporate two high-end Intel processors in a single package, offering dual-core and dual memory in a much denser environment. These processors focus only on density and are only BGA. They will therefore only be sold as complete systems by OEMs who will buy them from Intel and make changes. We had the opportunity to hold one of these big processors and take pictures.

The case measures 76.0 x 72.5 mm, making it the largest processor-based package * ever built, against the old Intel Pentium Pro (67.6 x 62.5 mm) and the EPYC case. AMD (75.4 x 58.5 mm).

Source: Intel

The enclosure contains two XCC compliant silicon chips, one designated master and one slave. The dice themselves are ~ 694mm2 each.

The biggest baller in the park

The holder is officially named FCBGA5903, which corresponds to table 5903 with a ball-and-socket grid, 5903 corresponding to the number of contacts or "balls" on the underside that go to the motherboard, like an integrated chip. . In contrast, the AMD EPYC chip contains 4094 pins. Most of these contacts are primarily in memory: this Platinum 9200 processor has twelve memory channels, all of which require pins. There is also a bit more power, because the TDP for the 56-core version is 400W.

For starters, Intel offers four different types of Platinum 9200:

In terms of weight, the processor is certainly around 200-300g, or half a pound. This was measured very scientifically by comparing it in my hands to the weight of my heavier phone, then comparing it to two phones. The chip certainly has a large volume, but since it is designed in BGA, it is unlikely that even the people who use it will keep it.

If we look at the design side, we can see that the package actually has three distinct layering steps (five, if you include the caps). The light brown and dark brown layers total up to 18 layers (recorded at the naked eye, difficult to see under a harsh light), and dark brown layers clearly represent double the thickness of the layers. light brown layers, which could indicate that it is power plans. of the package. Normally, we see processors with a total of 8 to 12 layers, which is another new step.

A close-up of the matrix of marbles shows the fine pitch between the contacts. The capacitors on the underside are extremely tiny compared to other processors – I mean really small. Each of these angles has 87 capacitors, for a total of 348.

Prices for this family of processors should not be disclosed. Intel said that since they were selling these chips to OEMs as barebones, they would probably not be able to price catalog prices for parts, and hoped that OEMs would sell them at a reasonable price. Since the new Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L high-end, 28-core processor with 4.5 TB of memory runs at around $ 18,000, the top of the Xeon Platinum 9282 could be anywhere from $ 25,000 to $ 50,000. , based on Intel Margins, OEM margins and profit margin.

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* Intel may have FPGA products exceeding this size, mainly because of the presence of HBM and other smart chips.

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