Intel has officially unveiled its latest Xeon 6 server processors alongside the Gaudi 3 AI accelerators, making some significant claims during the announcement.

The Xeon 6 6900P represents the first Xeon variant to incorporate performance cores (P-cores) tailored for compute-heavy tasks, while featuring efficient cores (E-cores) for lighter workloads with reduced power consumption. Intel is strategically blending P-cores and E-cores throughout the Xeon 6 series based on the intended market. The Xeon 6 6700E, which uses E-cores, was launched in June.

According to Intel, the Xeon 6 6900P offers double the performance of its predecessor, due to a higher core count, increased memory bandwidth, and integrated AI acceleration features in every core.

Alongside the P-cores, Intel has incorporated AI inference capabilities within the Xeon 6900P series, facilitating AI coprocessor functionalities on CPUs. AMD is also pursuing similar advancements. The rationale is that AI inferencing demands significantly less power and can therefore be handled on client PCs, eliminating the need for server-grade processors like GPUs.

The specifications of the Xeon 6900P processors are quite remarkable. In a significant upgrade from the previous generation, the maximum number of cores has been increased to 128, achieved through an innovative chiplet architecture. This design entails dividing the processor into three smaller, more easily manufacturable components rather than relying on a single, large silicon piece.

The Xeon 6 marks the debut of Micron’s new MRDIMM modules, which offer enhancements in both bandwidth and latency performance. With the Xeon 6900P, memory speeds can reach an impressive 8,800 MT/s, representing an improvement of up to 57%.

Additionally, the 6900P series features six Ultra Path Interconnect 2.0 links that facilitate CPU-to-CPU transfer rates of up to 24 GT/s, along with support for as many as 96 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and CXL 2.0 connectivity. It also introduces new vector extensions tailored for high-performance computing, as well as a matrix extension optimized for 16-bit floating point computations, which is particularly beneficial for AI inferencing.

However, the increased core count does bring about higher power consumption. The thermal design power (TDP) for four out of five processors in the 6900P range stands at 500 watts, while one processor operates at 400 watts. In contrast, the previous generation, the fifth-generation Xeon, had a maximum TDP of 350 watts.

There is certainly a noticeable improvement in performance. In a benchmark that involved a 7 billion parameter Llama 2 chatbot, Intel’s 96-core Xeon 6972P outperformed AMD’s 96-core EPYC 9654 by more than three times and showed a 128% increase in speed compared to the earlier generation Xeon. In a BERT language processing benchmark, the Xeon 6972P demonstrated a speed that was 4.3 times greater than the AMD Epyc and 2.2 times faster than the previous generation Xeon.

It is important to consider that the Epyc processor used for these benchmarks has been available for two years, and AMD is expected to launch a new generation of processors soon.

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