Intel announces Cascade Lake Xeons: 48 cores and 12-channel memory per socket
Intel has announced the next family of Xeon processors that it plans to ship in the first half of next year. The new parts represent a substantial upgrade over current Xeon chips, with up to 48 cores and 12 DDR4 memory channels per socket, supporting up to two sockets.
These processors will likely be the top-end Cascade Lake processors; Intel is labelling them "Cascade Lake Advanced Performance," with a higher level of performance than the Xeon Scalable Processors (SP) below them. The current Xeon SP chips use a monolithic die, with up to 28 cores and 56 threads. Cascade Lake AP will instead be a multi-chip processor with multiple dies contained with in a single package. AMD is using a similar approach for its comparable products; the Epyc processors use four dies in each package, with each die having 8 cores.
The switch to a multi-chip design is likely driven by necessity: as the dies become bigger and bigger it becomes more and more likely that they'll contain a defect. Using several smaller dies helps avoid these defects. Because Intel's 10nm manufacturing process isn't yet good enough for mass market production, the new Xeons will continue to use a version of the company's 14nm process. Intel hasn't yet revealed what the topology within each package will be, so the exact distribution of those cores and memory channels between chips is as yet unknown. The enormous number of memory channels will demand an enormous socket, currently believed to be a 5903 pin connector.
Intel also announced tinier 4-6 core E-2100 Xeons with ECC memory support.
Meanwhile, AMD is holding a New Horizon event on Nov. 6, where it is expected to announce 64-core Epyc processors.
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(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday November 05 2018, @11:32PM (1 child)
Would mod up +1 Insightful...or maybe +1 Funny for the "hot distractions" bit, that made me chuckle. I was almost thinking it would be a link to their Computex incident with the standalone AC unit. So surreal, and strangely satisfying, to see the titan falling. I'm sure it will catch itself before long, but for now I'm content to watch....and invest a little in AMD. I bought at $12/share.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 05 2018, @11:43PM
It's included in the "Intel Teases 28 Core Chip, AMD Announces Threadripper 2 With Up to 32 Cores" link, but I also alluded to it in this story:
AMD Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Intel [soylentnews.org]
And another thing out of Computex:
AMD Offers Threadripper Trade-in for Winners of Intel Core i7-8086K Sweepstakes [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]