Intel launched its 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids), Xeon CPU Max Series (code-named Sapphire Rapids HBM) and Data Center GPU Max Series (code-named Ponte Vecchio).
Intel described the rollout as one of the most important product launches in company history.
The new processors promise a leap in data center performance, efficiency, security and new capabilities for AI, the cloud, the network and edge, and the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Intel said 4th Gen Intel Xeon customers can expect a 2.9x average performance per watt efficiency improvement for targeted workloads when utilizing built-in accelerators, up to 70-watt power savings per CPU in optimized power mode with minimal performance loss, and a 52% to 66% lower TCO.
For 5G core workloads, built-in accelerators help increase throughput and decrease latency, while advances in power management enhance both the responsiveness and the efficiency of the platform. And, when compared to previous generations, 4th Gen Xeon delivers up to twice the virtualized radio access network (vRAN) capacity without increasing power consumption. This enables communications service providers to double the performance-per-watt to meet their critical performance, scaling and energy efficiency needs.
“The launch of 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors and the Max Series product family is a pivotal moment in fueling Intel’s turnaround, reigniting our path to leadership in the data center and growing our footprint in new arenas,” said Sandra Rivera, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center and AI Group. “Intel’s 4th Gen Xeon and the Max Series product family deliver what customers truly want – leadership performance and reliability within a secure environment for their real-world requirements – driving faster time to value and powering their pace of innovation.”
Notably, the 4th Gen Xeon and the Intel Max Series product family offer built-in accelerator engines. These include:
Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX)
With new Intel AMX, AI performance on the CPU expands to include fine-tuning and small and medium deep learning training models. Intel AMX is a built-in accelerator that improves the performance of deep learning training and inference. It is ideal for workloads like natural language processing, recommendation systems and image recognition.
Intel QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT)
By offloading encryption, decryption and compression, Intel QAT— now integrated as a built-in accelerator — helps free up processor cores so systems can serve a larger number of clients or use less power. With Intel QAT, 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are the highest- performance CPUs that can compress and encrypt in a single data flow.
Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (Intel DSA)
Intel DSA drives high performance for storage, networking and data-intensive workloads by improving streaming data movement and transformation operations. Designed to offload the most common data movement tasks that cause overhead in data center-scale deployments, Intel DSA helps speed up data movement across the CPU, memory and caches, as well as all attached memory, storage and network devices.
Intel Dynamic Load Balancer (Intel DLB)
Intel DLB helps improve system performance related to handling network data on multicore Intel® Xeon Scalable processors. It enables the efficient distribution of network processing across multiple CPU cores/threads and dynamically distributes network data across multiple CPU cores for processing as the system load varies. Intel DLB also restores the order of networking data packets processed simultaneously on CPU cores.
Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (Intel IAA)
Intel IAA helps run database and analytics workloads faster, with potentially greater power efficiency. This built-in accelerator increases query throughput and decreases the memory footprint for in-memory database and big data analytics workloads. Intel IAA is ideal for in- memory databases, open source databases, and data stores like RocksDB and ClickHouse.
Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-512)
Intel AVX-512 is the latest x86 vector instruction set, with up to two fused-multiply add (FMA) units and other optimizations to accelerate performance for demanding computational tasks, including scientific simulations, financial analytics, and 3D modeling and analysis.
Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-512) for vRAN
Intel AVX-512 for virtualized radio access network (vRAN) is designed to deliver greater capacity at the same power envelope for vRAN workloads. This helps communications service providers increase their performance per watt to meet critical performance, scaling and energy efficiency requirements.
Intel Crypto Acceleration
Intel Crypto Acceleration reduces the impact of implementing pervasive data encryption and increases the performance of encryption-sensitive workloads, like secure sockets layer (SSL) web servers, 5G infrastructure and VPNs/firewalls.
Intel Speed Select Technology (Intel SST)
Intel SST is designed to grant more active and expansive control over CPU performance. Intel SST enables improved server utilization and reduced qualification costs by allowing customers to configure a single server to match fluctuating workloads. The result is one flexible server with multiple configurations, leading to improved TCO.
Intel Data Direct I/O Technology (Intel DDIO)
Intel DDIO helps remove inefficiencies by enabling direct communication between Intel Ethernet controllers and adapters and host processor cache. Eliminating frequent visits to main memory can help reduce power consumption, provide greater I/O bandwidth scalability and reduce latency.
Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX)
With Intel SGX, organizations can unlock new opportunities for business collaboration and insights — even with sensitive or regulated data. Intel SGX is the most researched, updated and deployed confidential computing technology in data centers on the market today, with the smallest trust boundary. Confidential computing improves the isolation of sensitive data with enhanced hardware-based memory protections. Support for Intel SGX on Intel Xeon CPU Max Series is on DDR flat mode only.
Intel Trust Domain Extension (Intel TDX)
Intel TDX is a new capability available through select cloud providers in 2023 that offers increased confidentiality at the virtual machine (VM) level, enhancing privacy and control over data. Within an Intel TDX confidential VM, the guest OS and VM applications are isolated from access by the cloud host, hypervisor and other VMs on the platform.
Intel Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (Intel CET)
Intel CET provides enhanced hardware-based protections against return-oriented and jump/call- oriented programming attacks, two of the most common software-based attack techniques. Using this technology helps shut down an entire class of system memory attacks that long evaded software-only solutions.
