3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs Released

Today we see a huge announcement in the form of 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (codenamed Cooper Lake) coming out. While most CPU updates come with the whiz, bang, pow updates of performance, Intel is actually releasing the processors that are built around workloads, specifically AI. The new CPUs go hand in hand with the company’s hardware and software portfolios surrounding AI.

3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable

Artificial Intelligence, along with analytics, is set to change the game entirely. This technology is potentially, massively disruptive. While this technology can impact just about any industry those that will benefit most upfront include finance, healthcare, industrial, telecom and transportation. IDC is estimating that by next year 75% of commercial enterprise apps will use AI. With IoT and edge devices generating massive amounts of data, that will only go up in the future, this data needs to be analyzed in real-time to gain actionable insights. Companies need to think about developing AI and analytics from bottom to top in their infrastructure. Intel is looking to be an almost one-stop-shop through its portfolio of AI products and ecosystem of partners.

3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Performance

Let’s first get into the thing that everyone wants to know about with new CPUs, performance. Performance in CPUs is thought up in several ways but most of the time we just look at core and thread count. Here, no one is going to see anything record breaking, with the highest CPU, the Platinum 8380H having 28 cores for a total of 224 cores in an 8-socket system. The company claims that users will see enhanced performance, throughput, and CPU frequencies compared to 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. If a company is looking to refresh, they can expect up to a gain of 1.9x on popular workloads and up to 2.2x more VMs compared with 5-year-old, 4-socket platform equivalents.

Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Performance

Intel Deep Learning Boost got an enhancement was well. Now it comes with support of Brain Floating Point 16-bit (blfoat16) and Vector Neural Network Instructions (VNNI). This can lead to better AI inference and training performance to deliver up to 1.93% more AI training performance. The Intel Ultra Path Interconnect (Intel UPI) has been bumped up to six from three as well. More channels increase scalability and improve inter-CPU bandwidth for I/O- intensive workloads versus the previous generation.

The new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs also see an increase in overall system performance through supporting various other hardware. This including support more and faster DDR4 memory: up to 6 channels of DDR4-3200 MT/s and 16Gb density DIMMs, with up to 256GB DDR4 DIMMs per socket. Also adding support for Intel Optane PMem 200 series, new Intel SSD D7-P5500 & P5600 series, and Intel Stratix 10 NX FPGA, all of which we go into more detail following the links.

From a security perspective, The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs are stated to have hardware-enhanced security to protect data and maintain workload integrity, all while reducing performance overhead. The processors delver encryption at rest, in-use, and in-flight. Other security features include:

New Intel Platform Firmware Resilience (Intel PFR): An Intel FPGA-based solution that can protect platform firmware, detect corruptions, and restore back to a known-good state.3
Intel Security Essentials and Intel Security Libraries for Data Center: Supports the building of a trusted, secure, and controlled cloud with hardware-enhanced root of trust.3
Integrated Intel QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT): Chipset-based hardware acceleration for growing compression and cryptographic workloads enables greater efficiency while delivering up to 100 GB/s enhanced data transport and protection across server, storage, and network infrastructure.3 Available on select Intel C620A series chipsets.

3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor SKUs

Processor identifier	Cores/ threads	TDP (watts)	Processor cache	Processor base frequency (GHz)	Max Turbo frequency rate (GHz)	Cache(MB)	Memory capacities HL/H SKU suffix
PLATINUM 8380HL PLATINUM 8380H	28/56	250	38.5MB	2.9	4.3	38.5	4.5TB/1.12TB
PLATINUM 8376HL PLATINUM 8376H	28/56	205	35.75MB	2.6	4.3	38.5	4.5TB/1.12TB
PLATINUM 8354H	18/36	205	24.75MB	3.1	4.3	24.75	1.12TB
PLATINUM 8353H	18/36	150	24.75MB	2.5	3.8	24.75	1.12TB
GOLD 6348H	24/48	165	33MB	2.3	4.2	33	1.12TB
GOLD 6328HL GOLD 6328H	16/32	165	22MB	2.8	4.3	22	4.5TB/1.12TB
GOLD 5320H	20/40	150	27.5MB	2.4	4.2	27.5	1.12TB
GOLD 5318H	18/36	150	24.75MB	2.5	3.8	24.75	1.12TB

To help customers understand where each of these new models plays best, Intel has created a workload guide to act as a cheat sheet to make CPU selection easier.

Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Workload Chart