Ian Cutress section
The launch of Intel’s scalable Ice Lake Xeon processors has been on the wings for several years. Delays in Intel’s 10 nm manufacturing process caused a series of setbacks for all 10 nm product lines proposed by Intel, especially the high-performance Xeon family: trying to manufacture 660 mm2 of silicon in one process is difficult at best of the hypotheses. But Intel has 10 nm in a place where it is economically viable to start selling large Xeon processors at retail, and the official launch today of Intel’s 3rd The Scalable Xeon Generation has more than 200,000 units sent to the main customers so far. The new flagship, the Xeon Platinum 8380, has 40 cores, offers PCIe 4.0 and takes advantage of the IPC gain in the core of Intel’s Sunny Cove processor. We are testing with the best in the market.
3 from Intelrd Scalable Xeon generation: 10nm becomes corporate
Today Intel is launching the full processor stack under the 3rd Brand of the Scalable Xeon Generation Ice Lake, developed based on its 10 nm process. These processors, up to 40 cores per socket, are designed exclusively for single socket and double socket systems, competing in a market with other x86 and Arm options available. With this new generation, Intel’s offering aims to be twofold: first, the generational rise compared to 2WL Gen, but also the narrative about selling a solution instead of just selling a processor.
Intel messaging with its new scalable Ice Lake Xeon (ICX or ICL-SP) distances itself from simple single-core or multicore performance and is instead the set of unique features, such as AVX-512, DLBoost, acceleration of encryption and security, along with appropriate software optimizations or combined with specialized products from the Intel family, such as Optane DC Persistent Memory, Agilex FPGAs / SmartNICs or 800 series Ethernet, offer better performance and better metrics for those who actually buy the systems. This angle, Intel believes, puts it in a better position than its competitors, which offer only a limited subset of these features or lack the infrastructure to link these products under a single easy-to-use brand.
A 40-core 10-nm Ice Lake Xeon processor wafer
However, the launch of a new generation of products and an expanded portfolio ensures that the product is actually put to the test for its gross-based performance claims. This generation of the scalable Xeon, Intel’s first at 10nm, uses a newer Sunny Cove core of architecture. The benefits of this core, as explained by Intel, begin with an extra 20% gross performance increase, enabled through a much broader core with an improved front end and more execution capabilities. Outside the core, memory bandwidth is improved by increasing memory channels from six to eight, but also new memory prefetching techniques and optimizations that increase bandwidth up to 100% with another + 25 efficiency %. Mesh interconnection between cores also uses updated algorithms to power IO to and from the cores, and Intel is promoting better power management through independent power management agents within each IP block.
In addition, Intel is using accelerating features, stating that, in relation to raw performance, the software optimized for these accelerators will increase rather than generationally. This starts with the basic layout of the kernel, especially with respect to SIMD commands such as SSSE, AVX, AVX2 and AVX-512: Intel is allowing better encryption support on its ISA, allowing AES, SHA, GFNI and other instructions are executed simultaneously on all vector instruction sets. The AVX-512 improved frequencies during more complex bit operations for ICX with smarter mapping between instructions and power consumption, offering an extra 10% frequency for all 256-bit instructions. In addition, there are Intel Speed Select technologies, such as performance profile, base frequency enhancements, turbo frequency enhancements and core power assistance to ensure maximum performance per core or quality of service during a heavily used system, depending on customer requirements. Other new features include software protection extensions, allowing enclave sizes of up to 512 GB per socket with selected models.
Ice Lake’s Sunny Cove Core: Part 2
The Sunny Cove core, in fact, is already on the market. Intel made a consumer core variant and a core server variant. Ice Lake Xeon has the server variant, with larger caches and slightly different optimization points, but it is the consumer variant that we saw and tested in the laptop format. Sunny Cove is part of Intel’s Ice Lake notebook processor portfolio, whose performance we analyzed on August 1st 2019, 614 days ago. This period of time between activating a notebook core and activating the same core (with server upgrades) in the company is almost unknown, but indicative of Intel’s manufacturing problems.
However, in our Ice Lake core notebook test, we saw a gross performance of + 17-18% over the previous generation, however, this was at the cost of 15-20% in frequency. Where the product really stood out was in limited memory scenarios, where a new memory controller provided a better improvement than a generation. When it comes to this generation of scalable Xeon processors with the new core, as you can see in the review, in non-accelerated workloads we have a very similar story. That said, consumer hardware often has limited TDP, especially laptops! With the new Ice Lake Xeon platform, Intel is increasing the peak TDP from 205 W to 270 W, which also offers additional performance advantages.
The Headline Act: Intel’s Xeon Platinum 8380
The mayor of Intel’s new line of processors is the Platinum 8380 – a complete 40-core giant. If we put it side by side with the processors of the previous generation, there are some important specifications to be observed.
| Intel Xeon comparison: 3rd generation vs 2nd generation Pico vs Pico |
||
| Xeon Platinum 8380 |
AnandTech | Xeon Platinum 8280 |
| 40/80 | Colors / Threads | 28/56 |
| 2900/3400/3000 | Base / ST / MT Freq | 2700/4000/3300 |
| 50MB + 60MB | L2 + L3 cache | 28 MB + 38.5 MB |
| 270 W | TDP | 205 W |
| PCIe 4.0 x64 | PCIe | PCIe 3.0 x48 |
| 8 x DDR4-3200 | DRAM support | 6 x DDR4-2933 |
| 4 TB | DRAM capacity | 1 TB |
| 200 Series | Optane | 100 series |
| 4 TB Optano + 2 TB DRAM |
Optano Capacity By socket |
1 TB DDR4-2666 + 1.5 TB |
| 512 GB | SGX Enclave | None |
| 1P, 2P | Socket support | 1P, 2P, 4P, 8P |
| 3 x 11.2 GT / s | UPI Links | 3 x 10.4 GT / s |
| $ 8099 | Price (1ku) | $ 10099 * 6258R, 2P Variant it’s only $ 3950 |
Among these processors, the new flagship has a number of positive points:
- + 43% more cores (40 vs 28),
- almost double the cache,
- + 33% more PCIe lanes (64 vs 48),
- 2x the PCIe bandwidth (PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 3.0)
- 4x memory support (4 TB vs 1 TB)
- Support for SGX Enclave
- + 7% more bandwidth from socket to socket
- Support for DDR4-3200 Optane DCPMM 200-series
- The price dropped 20% … or increased 100% if you compare it to 6258R
Although we must highlight some of the negative aspects:
- TDP increased + 32% (270 W vs 205 W)
- The ST frequency is low (3400 MHz vs 4000 MHz)
- The MT frequency is low (3000 MHz vs 3300 MHz)
If we combine the spec sheet cores and the frequency of all cores (MT), Ice Lake really has almost the same efficiency here as the previous generation. Modern high-performance processors generally operate well outside the peak efficiency window, however, Ice Lake being at a lower frequency generally suggests that Ice Lake is having to operate closer to the peak efficiency point to stay within a TDP suitable socket than previous generations. This is similar to what we saw in the laptop space.
Features on all Ice Lake Xeon scalable processors
We will delve deeper into the different processors on the next page, however, it is worth noting some of the key features that will apply to the entire new ICL-SP family from Intel. Among the nearly 40 new processors, including all parts focused on media, processors focused on the network and all the individual optimizations used, all processors will have the following:
- All Ice Lake Xeons will support eight DDR4-3200 channels in 2DPC
- All Ice Lake Xeons will support 4 TB of DRAM per socket
- All Ice Lake Xeons will support SGX Enclaves (size may vary)
- All Ice Lake Xeons will support 64x PCIe 4.0 lanes
- All Ice Lake Xeons will support three UPI links at 11.2 GT / s
- All Silver / Gold / Platinum Xeons will support 200 Series Optane DC Persistent Memory
In the past, Intel often produced some of these features at will, selling those that are most capable at the highest cost. This segmentation is often the result of a lack of competition in the market. This time, however, Intel decided to unify part of its segmentation for consistency. The main thing in my mind is memory support: at the beginning of the Scalable Xeon family, Intel started charging more for high-capacity memory models. But considering the competition that now offers 4 TB / socket at no extra cost, it appears that Intel has decided to unify the stack with a memory support option.
Intel 3rd Scalable Xeon generation: new socket, new motherboards
Ice Lake Xeons, now with eight memory channels instead of six, will require a new socket and new motherboards. Ice Lake comes with 4189 pins and requires an LGA4189-4 ‘Whitley’ motherboard. This is different from the ‘Cedar Island’ LGA4189-5 in use for Cooper Lake, and the two are not interoperable, however, they share an energy profile.
This really brings us to a point about the Intel portfolio. Technically, the 10nm Ice Lake is not the only member of the 3rd Scalable Gen Xeon family – Intel considered it appropriate to group 14nm Cooper Lake and 10nm Ice Lake under the same title. Intel is separating the two by declaring that Cooper Lake is focused on several specific high-volume customers looking to deploy four- and eight-socket systems with specific AI workloads. In comparison, Ice Lake is for the mass market and limited to two socket systems.
Ice Lake and Cooper Lake have the ‘3’ in the name of the processor, indicating the third generation. Users can know which Cooper Lake they are because they end in H or HL – Ice Lake processors (as we’ll see on the next page) never have H or HL. Most Cooper Lake processors are Platinum models anyway, with some Xeon Gold. As we analyze this analysis, we will focus exclusively on Ice Lake, as this is the platform that Intel is selling to the mainstream.
This review
In preparation for this release today, Intel provided us with a 2U system featuring two of the top models of Ice Lake Xeon: we have dual 40 core Xeon Platinum 8380s! At the same time, we also spent a dual Xeon Gold 6330 system from Supermicro, which has two 28-core processors and acts as a good comparison to the previous generation Xeon Platinum 8280.
Our analysis today will cover the processor stack, our benchmarks, energy analysis, memory analysis and some initial conclusions.