Intel Sapphire (*56*) workstation chips tout up to 56 cores and unlocked SKUs

Intel has formally launched the workstation-focused variations of its Sapphire (*56*) Xeon processors, claiming an nearly 30 p.c enhance in efficiency per core customers in comparison to its earlier platform.

The newest updates to the Intel Xeon W processor portfolio, the brand new chips are based mostly on the identical know-how because the 4th Generation Xeon Scalable server household the chipmaker launched final month.

These newest workstation components can be found for pre-order instantly, Intel mentioned, with system availability coming in March from distributors equivalent to Dell, HP, Lenovo and Supermicro.

At launch, the brand new chips are cut up into two households, the Xeon W-3400 line and the Xeon W-2400 line, with the latter aimed toward mainstream workstation techniques and the previous concentrating on higher-end techniques, or what the chipmaker has dubbed knowledgeable workstations.

However, these do not symbolize the height of Intel’s workstation portfolio, which is crammed by techniques based mostly on the Xeon Scalable platform, dubbed dual-socket knowledgeable, whereas Intel Core chips will kind the entry and cell stage (Intel mentioned it’s going to disclose extra on the latter this quarter).

The variations between the Xeon W-3400 knowledgeable chips and the Xeon W-2400 mainstream chips lie within the most variety of cores, DDR5 reminiscence channels and PCIe 5.0 lanes accessible in every.

Both of those are additional divided up into w9, w7, w5 and w3 sub-brands, such that w9 chips solely characteristic within the Xeon W-3400 knowledgeable household, and w3 chips are solely discovered within the Xeon W-2400 household. Got that?

The Xeon W-3400 tops out at 56 cores for the w9 chips, 28 cores for w7 and 16 cores for w5. All of those characteristic 8 reminiscence channels for up to 4TB of DDR5-4800 DRAM, plus 112 PCIe 5.0 lanes which permits for up to 28 storage units or up to 7 GPUs to be related.

For the Xeon W-2400 household, these have up to 24 cores for the w7 chips, 16 for w5 and up to 8 cores for w3. All of this household characteristic 64 traces of PCIe 5.0 for up to 16 storage units or 4 GPUs, and 4 reminiscence channels for up to 2TB of DDR5-4800 DRAM. The exception is the w3 SKUs which solely help DDR5-4400.

The W790 motherboard chipset, widespread to each households, supplies an additional 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up to 8 SATA ports, up to 5 USB 3.2 ports, plus built-in Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5Gbps Ethernet port.

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Some of the brand new Xeon W processors are additionally unlocked, enabling extremely specialised workload tuning, in accordance to Intel. These chips are denoted by an “X” on the finish of the processor quantity.

“While most workstation users prioritize stability and reliability for those mission critical workflows, we recognise that there are a group of users out there who value performance above all else and want the choice to tune their processor to meet their needs,” mentioned Intel Workstation Platform Manager Zac Kranich.

“For those individuals, these unlocked SKUs will give the users the options for tuning per core frequency and voltage control, negative offset ratio tuning for AVX as well as the new AMX instructions.”

Tuning even extends to the flexibility to regulate the frequency of the interconnects between the cores and tiles contained in the chip package deal, he claimed, through an Intel Extreme tuning utility.

According to Intel, these new Xeon W processors present a efficiency enhance just by enabling core counts (up to 56) in a single-socket workstation that will have beforehand required a twin-socket configuration. Clock speeds may go up to 4.8GHz with Intel Turbo enhance Max 3.0.

To put figures to these numbers, Intel claims that the brand new platform delivers up to 140 p.c extra efficiency than the earlier era, a minimum of as measured by the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark.

Intel additionally claims 70 p.c better efficiency for workloads equivalent to modelling, simulation and visualization, and up to a 75 p.c enhance in efficiency for scientific computing and evaluation, though the efficiency clients see will clearly rely upon their particular utility and workload.

The chip large mentioned there are over 50 new workstation designs powered by the newest Xeon W processors within the pipeline, hailing the launch as “a major milestone.”

The advisable buyer worth for the Xeon W Processor household begins at $359 (Xeon w3-2423) and scales up to $5,889 (Xeon w9-3495X), Intel instructed us. Details on particular system availability will probably be coming from system distributors within the coming weeks. ®