4On the evening of July 7th，Intel officially releases third-generation Xeon Scalable processors，That is to say, Ice Lake-SP which has been announced for a long time，This is Intel’s first 10nm process data center processor，This processor has up to 40 cores，Significantly improved performance compared to the previous generation，Popular data center workloads reduced by an average of 46%，New processors also enhance platform capabilities，The third-generation Xeon Scalable processor is Intel's first mainstream dual-socket data center processor that enables SGX software protection extension technology.，There are also Crypto Acceleration and DL Boost features for AI acceleration。
Intel Xeon Scalable processors are designed for cloud computing providers and other companies running large-scale data centers，In fact, it starts shipping to users for testing and deployment before release.，In the first few months of 2021，Intel has shipped more than 200,000，We plan to continue to accelerate shipments in the future。All major cloud service providers plan to deploy Ice Lake services，They will launch this kind of service for the first time in April。Intel has more than 50 excellent OEMs、ODMs expect to bring more than 250 Ice Lake-based designs to market。
The third generation Xeon Scalable processor actually consists of two parts，One is Ice Lake-SP of Whitley platform，Single or dual path only，CPU core upgraded to Sunny Cove microarchitecture，Compared with the original various derivative microarchitectures based on Skylake，Sunny Cove has made great improvements in IPC。The four-way and eight-way are exclusive to Cooper Lake released not long ago.，It is actually a 14nm Skylake derivative。
Ice Lake-SP compared to the previous generation Cascade Lake，Maximum number of cores increased from 28 to 40，IPC increased by 20%，The overall performance increased by 46%，AI performance has been improved by 74%，Compared to the system five years ago，Performance improved by 165%。
46%Performance improvements are based on standard benchmarks，In many fields of application, there is actually more than 50% performance improvement.，including cloud computing、5G、Internet of things、HPC、AI and other key work areas，This is mainly because AI is becoming increasingly important at the edge，The performance improvement of Ice Lake-SP in this area is very obvious.。
The core count of the third generation Xeon Scalable processor starts from 8 cores，Up to 40 cores，A significant increase compared to the previous generation’s 4 to 28 cores，The cache architecture and capacity have also increased due to the architecture upgrade.。In terms of memory, it has been upgraded from the previous generation’s 6-channel DDR4-2933 to 8-channel DDR4-3200.，Maximum content has also been increased from 3TB to 4TB，The maximum capacity of Optane persistent memory has also been increased from 1.5TB to 2TB.。PCI-E version upgraded from 3.0 to 4.0，Now offers 64 PCI-E 4.0 lanes per slot。UPI channels are still 2 to 3，But the speed per channel is increased from 10.4GT/s to 11.2GT/s，In addition, there are a series of instruction set upgrades。
Ice Lake-SP compared to Cascade Lake，Out-of-order reorder buffer size expanded from 224 to 384，Level 1 data cache increased from 32KB to 48KB，Level 2 cache increased from 1MB to 1.25MB，A second FMA unit was introduced in the backend，In this way, there are two ordinary FMA + one FMA512 unit.。
The arrival of the new core is a series of new instruction sets，Via dedicated instruction set，The performance of Ice Lake-SP in many encryption and decryption calculations is much higher than that of Cascade Lake.，The most exaggerated one is 5.63 times。But if you want to enjoy the performance increase，Software needs to be recompiled for the new instruction set。
3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors Bring vAES、vPCLMULQDQ instruction set，And PCI-E 4.0、DDIO and other new features，Compared with previous generation products，Average performance improvement of 1.62x across a range of widely deployed network workloads。
The L1 and L2 cache latencies of the third-generation Xeon Scalable processors are actually only slightly higher than those of their opponents.，However, in terms of L3 cache, the latest generation EPYC Milan is still composed of one ioD and multiple CCDs.，L3 cache latency within the same die is very low，But the latency is very high when accessing other Die's L3 cache，And the third generation Xeon Scalable processor is a big chip，So L3 cache latency is very stable，In addition, the L3 cache latency of accessing another socket CPU is also much lower compared to EPYC.，Compared with its previous generation products, it is also much lower。
memory，The third generation Xeon Scalable processor has been upgraded to 8 channels，The memory frequency has also been upgraded from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200，And now the two memory slots for each channel can maintain the frequency at 3200MHz.，Compare EPYC Milan single slot 3200MHz，Dual slot 2933MHz actually has more advantages than。In terms of memory latency, due to the increase in the number of channels, the latency is slightly improved compared to the previous generation.，But it’s still much lower than its rivals。In terms of capacity, the maximum capacity is 4TB.，But Xeon Scalable processors can be installed with an additional 2TB of Optane persistent memory，There is no opponent in this area。
Because the third generation Xeon Scalable processor supports more instruction sets，So even if the number of cores is at a disadvantage, the，But it can still lead its opponents in many fields，For example, in supporting high-performance computing of AVX-512、encryption、And AI applications that support DL Boost。
In addition to the third generation Xeon Scalable processors，Intel also launched the Optane persistent memory 200 series at this conference、Optane SSD P5800X、Intel SSD D5-P5316、Intel Ethernet 800 Series 100Gbps Network Card、Agilex FPGA and supporting Quartus Prime 20.4 software，The Xeon processor is not just a processor，Intel can also provide a complete set of supporting products and services，This is why Xeon processors are so successful。
Since Intel launched the first Xeon Scalable processor in 2017，Intel has shipped more than 50 million Xeon Scalable processors to customers worldwide，Supporting data centers around the world。in less than ten years，Intel has deployed more than 1 billion Xeon cores，Powering the cloud。and today，According to Intel’s estimate，More than 800 cloud service providers have deployed servers based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors。
Content source：https://newsroom.intel.com