Intel plans a 144-core CPU but you probably wont be able to buy it anyway

Date:
Thu, 30 Mar 2023 16:49:10 +0000

Description:
Sierra Forest will bring more cores than AMDs Bergamo but will it matter at all?

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Intel updated its Xeon roadmap yesterday at a virtual DCAI (Data Center and
AI Investor Webinar) that confirmed that it is working on a 144-core Xeon processor currently called Sierra Forrest and expected to come in the first half of 2024. Whats surprising is that Intel wants to launch another pair of Xeon products, Emerald Rapids (in Q4 2023) and Granite Rapids, shortly after Sierra Forest.

The other half-surprise is that Intel is embracing Performance/Efficiency cores at the Data Center level, which makes sense because thats what the market demands. We know that AMD will launch a 128-core Bergamo CPU based on the Zen 4c architecture later this year.

Both P- and E-cores will not live on the same silicon (like on consumer CPUs) as they target different audiences. They also come with their very own challenges; both have to contend with a fixed power and transistor budget.

Fewer Power cores with all bells and whistles (e.g. AVX-512), clocked at higher speeds will generate/consume as much power as more Efficiency cores that have fewer bells and whistles (e.g. single threaded) with lower clock speed.

Then theres cache (the memory thats nearest to the cores), latency (moving data to and from various parts of the CPU), the chip yield (how many usable silicon chips are produced), available memory bandwidth (to the main system memory) and so on and so forth. Does it matter to anyone else?

Rumors of a 120-core Xeon CPU were finally put to bed yesterday but while this race produces entertaining headlines, it wont matter much to anyone but hyperscalers. Consumers wont be able to buy these chips anytime soon (ed: well, they might be able to bid for them on Ebay or buy them from Aliexpress once theyre decommissioned though, in a few years) as they will require specialized server systems (including a new breed of DDR memory modules) that would make no sense to end users and will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per piece.

The high-core count, low-power strategy that both Intel and AMD have adopted will help them contain the Arm threat for now. Theres at least a half-a dozen rivals that either want a bigger part of the pie (Huawei, Nvidia, Ampere) or reduce their dependence on Intel and AMD (Amazon, Tencent, Google).

AWSs Graviton has 64 cores but wed expect that to rise depending on market demand. Ampere already has 128 cores and Arms Neoverse Poseidon platform
which was announced in September 2020, aims to offer higher core density (higher than N1s 128-core limit) when it rolls out.

Higher core count matters for applications such as web hosting (Virtual Private Servers or VPS), virtual desktop (VDI) and a bunch of other applications that do not consume a lot of power and dont mind living in a multi-tenancy environment. Here's our pick of the best bare metal hosting around



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-plans-a-144-core-cpu-but-you-probably-won t-be-able-to-buy-it-anyway


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