Intel introduced Ice Lake-SP, the first 10nm server processors. They have up to 40 cores and are almost one and a half times faster than their predecessors.

Intel introduced Ice Lake-SP, the first 10nm server processors. They have up to 40 cores and are almost one and a half times faster than their predecessors.

Intel has unveiled the 3rd generation Xeon Scalable processors, codenamed Ice Lake-SP, designed for use in data centers using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Intel has already shipped more than 200,000 new chips to its customers during the first quarter of this year, and the company’s 50 different partners have already prepared more than 250 base platforms for the new CPUs, according to Intel.

The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are manufactured using a 10nm process technology and are offered in configurations from 8 to 40 physical cores per processor socket. The chips’ base frequency ranges from 2.0 to 3.6 GHz, the turbo frequency for a single core is from 3.1 to 3.7 GHz. Also indicated is the value of the turbo frequency for all cores simultaneously, which ranges from 2.5 to 3.6 GHz.

Gen 3 Intel Xeon Scalable chips offer eight DDR4-3200 memory channels and PCI Express 4.0 (up to 64 lanes per slot). The TDP indicator, depending on the model, varies from 105 to 270 watts.

It is noted that along with the new 3rd generation Xeon Scalable processors, data centers can use Intel Optane 200 series modules, Intel Optane Solid State Drive P5800X, and Intel SSD D5-P5316 Intel Ethernet 800 network adapters series, and programmable gate arrays Intel Agilex FPGA. The platform supports up to 6 TB of system memory (DDR4 + Optane PMem 200) per processor socket.

Intel claims the 3rd generation Xeon Scalable chips deliver significant performance gains – up to 46% on average in mainstream data center workloads over the previous generation. Designed for a wide variety of network environments, the optimized N-Series processors deliver an average of 62% more performance across a wide range of deployed networks and 5G workloads over the previous generation. The new platform delivers up to 1.56x the AI inference performance for image classification compared to the previous generation on edge.

The company also notes that Xeon Scalable is compatible with over 500 Internet of Things (IoT) and Intel Select Solutions ready to deploy.

Xeon Scalable Gen 3 announced several new and enhanced platform capabilities, including embedded security with Intel SGX technology, cryptographic acceleration with Intel Crypto Acceleration technology, and AI computing Intel DL Boost technology.