Intel has formally launched the workstation-focused variations of its Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors, claiming an almost 30 % improve in efficiency per core consumer in comparison with its earlier platform.

The newest updates to the Intel Xeon W processor portfolio, the brand new chips are based mostly on the identical expertise because the fourth-generation Xeon Scalable server household the chipmaker launched final month.

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

Intel Workstation Platforms

At launch, the brand new chips are divided into two households, the Xeon W-3400 line and the Xeon W-2400 line, the latter concentrating on mainstream workstation techniques and the previous concentrating on high-end techniques, or what the chipmaker has dubbed consultants. work stations

Nonetheless, these do not symbolize the height of Intel’s workstation portfolio, which is crammed with techniques based mostly on the Xeon Scalable platform, referred to as dual-socket maven, whereas Intel Core chips will kind the entry-level. and cellular (Intel stated it’ll reveal extra in regards to the latter this quarter).

Intel Xeon W processor line

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 obtainable on every.

Intel® W-3400

Each are divided into w9, w7, w5, and w3 sub-brands, such that w9 chips are solely discovered within the knowledgeable Xeon W-3400 household, and w3 chips are solely discovered within the Xeon W-2400 household. I’ve it?

The Xeon W-3400 has a most of 56 cores for w9 chips, 28 cores for w7, and 16 cores for w5. All of those characteristic 8 reminiscence channels for as much as 4TB of DDR5-4800 DRAM, plus 112 PCIe 5.0 lanes that enable as much as 28 storage units or as much as 7 GPUs to be related.

For the Xeon W-2400 household, these have as much as 24 cores for the w7 chips, 16 for the w5 and as much as 8 cores for the w3. This whole household options 64 lanes of PCIe 5.0 for as much as 16 storage units or 4 GPUs and 4 reminiscence channels for as much as 2TB of DDR5-4800 DRAM. The exception is w3 SKUs that solely help DDR5-4400.

Intel W-2400

The W790 motherboard chipset, frequent to each households, supplies a further 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes, as much as 8 SATA ports, as much as 5 USB 3.2 ports, plus built-in Wi-Fi 6E and a pair of.5Gbps Ethernet port.

A few of the new Xeon W processors are additionally unlocked, permitting for extremely specialised workload tuning, in response to Intel. These chips are indicated by an “X” on the finish of the processor quantity.

“Whereas most workstation customers prioritize stability and reliability for these mission-critical workflows, we acknowledge that there’s a group of customers who worth efficiency above all else and wish the choice to tune their processor to satisfy your wants,” stated Intel Workstation Platform. Supervisor Zac Kranich.

“For these of us, these unlocked SKUs will give customers tuning choices for middle frequency and voltage management, destructive offset ratio tuning for AVX, in addition to the brand new AMX directions.”

The tuning even extends to the power to regulate the frequency of the interconnects between cores and tiles throughout the chipset, he stated, by way of an Intel Excessive tuning utility.

In response to Intel, these new Xeon W processors present a efficiency increase just by enabling core counts (as much as 56) in a single-socket workstation that might beforehand have required a dual-socket configuration. Clock speeds may go as much as 4.8 GHz with Intel Turbo increase Max 3.0.

To place numbers to these numbers, Intel claims that the brand new platform affords as much as 140 % extra efficiency than the earlier technology, at the very least as measured by the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark.

Intel additionally claims 70% extra efficiency for workloads like modeling, simulation, and visualization, and as much as 75% elevated efficiency for analytics and scientific computing, although the efficiency clients see will clearly depend upon their software and cargo. of particular work.

The chip large stated there are greater than 50 new workstation designs powered by the newest Xeon W processors within the pipeline, hailing the launch as “a serious milestone.”

Really useful buyer pricing for the Xeon W household of processors begins at $359 (Xeon w3-2423) and goes as much as $5,889 (Xeon w9-3495X), Intel informed us. System distributors will present particulars on particular system availability within the coming weeks. ®