Intel Ice Lake Xeon W to Challenge AMD Threadripper With 38 Cores [Update]

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Technology provider CompSource has already listed a couple of Intel's looming Ice Lake Xeon W 10nm chips on its online store, pointing to an upcoming "core-heavy" rival to AMD Ryzen Threadripper chips. 

 

Quotes

Quote

According to an alleged leaked PowerPoint slide, shared via Twitter in April, Intel's Xeon W-3300 series is expected to sport up to 38 Sunny Cove CPU cores. However, we know that the Ice Lake architecture is capable of up to 40 cores, as seen on the 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable processors. We suspect the chipmaker wants to avoid product cannibalization. 

 

As spotted via Twitter user momomo_us, CompSource has listed chips from the Xeon W-3300 lineup, starting with the W-3323 at $1,071.45 and topping out at W-3375 for $6,196.32. In comparison to existing Xeon W-3200 (Cascade Lake) family, we're looking at a 36% increase in maximum core count plus all the benefits of the new Ice Lake microarchitecture. In addition to maximizing the amount of cores, Ice Lake also pushes the maximum amount of L3 cache up to 57MB, a 48% uplift in comparison to the Xeon W-3200 series.

 

Unfortunately, CompSource didn't reveal the complete specifications for the Xeon W-3300 parts. Given, the 57MB L3 cache on the Xeon W-3375, we expect that this is the flagship part and features 38 cores and 76 threads.

CompSource listed the various Xeon W-3300 processors with a maximum boost clock speed of 4 GHz, lending credence to specifications from the alleged Intel PowerPoint slide. 

 

Xeon W-3300 should be more efficient than Xeon W-3200, since the former leverages Intel's 10nm process node versus the latter's 14nm process node. Note that Intel is utilizing its first-generation 10nm manufacturing process for the Xeon W-3300 processors, which explains the low operating clocks. Clock speeds should improve with subsequent processors that utilize the 10nm SuperFin process node.

 

There hasn't been any news on the Ice Lake-X (ICL-X) front, meaning Intel may forsake the high-end desktop (HEDT) community for this generation. Lacking an Ice Lake-X lineup, then the Xeon W-3300 series will likely go head-to-head with AMD's Ryzen Threadripper (Pro) 3000 processors that wield Zen 2 cores. Xeon W-3300 offers similar features, such as the 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes on Ryzen Threadripper and eight-channel support on Ryzen Threadripper Pro.Xeon W-3300 processors will drop into the new LGA4189 CPU socket and bring many attractive traits to the table. For starters, the core-heavy chips will support up to 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes. There is also rumored support for up to eight channels of DDR4-3200 ECC memory, opening the door to outfitting a single system with up to 4TB of memory.

 

My thoughts

Well, more competition is always good. Hopefully this (whenever intel releases), will actually be competitive (and very likely with Threadripper Zen 3). As good news as this is for competition, there are some places where it'll certainly fall behind, as AMD does have a 64c 128t variant of it's thereadripper but 32c and 64t is usually the more sane option, so, Intel's got that? I don't really know much. Then of course there's the clock speed, according to this article Intel's max boost clock is 4.0 Ghz however, AMD's 3990x has a boost clock of 4.3GHz. So it isn't really looking good for Intel. So yea, Intel will certainly have to do a lot more, a lot more quickly in order to truly catch to AMD in this space. And as always, we should probably wait for the actual announcement, release and 3rd-party reviews in order to make a judgement on this matter, and take these rumours with a grain of salt.

Sources

Tom's hardware

[jaslion]

If this is based on the same architecture that is in current 10nm laptop chips it would mean that the single core performance would basically be identical. IF and ONLY IF intel allows it's xeons to have long term higher boosting.

 

So then it comes down to price really. A lot of server farms buy whatever is going to scale the best so if it means being able to put the performance of about 2 systems in a single one that will be the one they go for UNLESS the price difference in hardware makes it worthwhile.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, jaslion said:

So then it comes down to price really. A lot of server farms buy whatever is going to scale the best so if it means being able to put the performance of about 2 systems in a single one that will be the one they go for UNLESS the price difference in hardware makes it worthwhile.

Xeon-W and Threadripper are both workstation CPUs, you won't find these in the majority of servers since ~80% of the market is dual socket and these do not support that. They are specifically workstation products too, not server.

 

Intel Ice Lake Xeon Scalable CPUs are already in the market, EPYC 3rd Gen is handily spanking those in performance and also price. There are of course specific workloads that do run better on Intel but overall the absolute mess Intel made of the Xeon lineup when they transitioned to the new naming Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum by segmenting even more features even within the same product line i.e. Gold was so stupid. By stupid I mean Intel had to back track on some of it and introduce new revisions that ended in R that corrected some of the stupid decisions and also significantly cutting the price, the only thing you lost was greater than dual socket support (meh).

 

Really the only thing that makes Ice Lake even slightly competitive in the market is their existing presence in the market and all the existing platforms and products that use Intel. If Intel isn't able to step up significantly with the next archecture it's going to be a very, very big problem for them. Server market is already on mass moving to AMD but that's a huge mountain to climb, Intel has time but only so much.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Xeon-W and Threadripper are both workstation CPUs, you won't find these in the majority of servers since ~80% of the market is dual socket and these do not support that. They are specifically workstation products too, not server.

I misread this as xeon w vs epyc instead of threadripper. Yeah intel as of now is by far the second option in the server space.

 

As for workstation well unless it's priced right and better than threadripper currently I doubt it will do anything in the workstation market either.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, jaslion said:

As for workstation well unless it's priced right and better than threadripper currently I doubt it will do anything in the workstation market either.

It's a little odd on the workstation side as far as I know Intel hasn't nearly lost as much ground there and there has been much less uptake of TR by the large vendors. I think Lenovo is the only big one really pushing TR at all.

 

Not sure why, suspect it's mostly to do with I/O and existing designs being very Intel reliant on some of the features, or maybe workstation users are less risk takers and adverse to switching when realistically the gains actually aren't so drastic you basically have to 

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's a little odd on the workstation side as far as I know Intel hasn't nearly lost as much ground there and there has been much less uptake of TR by the large vendors. I think Lenovo is the only big one really pushing TR at all.

 

Not sure why, suspect it's mostly to do with I/O and existing designs being very Intel reliant on some of the features, or maybe workstation users are less risk takers and adverse to switching when realistically the gains actually aren't so drastic you basically have to 

Workstation designs do tend to be used for a lot longer than anything else oddly enough.

 

I believe it will be a slow crawl that accelerates the moment more servers also start using amd as often these workstations are used in environments of rendering, advanced studies,... all places where long term processing takes place on a system that is not the workstation and once it gets known that it's powered by amd you'll get that typical word of mouth oh hey this stuff is good thing going on.

[porina]

How is its successor Sapphire Rapids going? I'm not up to speed on the rumours. Basically Ice Lake Xeons are very late, as are derivative products. Sapphire Rapids I see from more credible sources as being targeted for early 2022. Also, if memory serves me right, Ice Lake server is based on the same 10nm as Ice Lake mobile, which is the one that did not scale well with clock. Needs the newer 10SF used with Tiger Lake but I guess they were too far down the old path to change it. If you want to draw a parallel to desktop, these Ice Lake workstation CPUs are in a similar situation to Rocket Lake. Microarchitecture was fine when it came out but held back by process. Overall still a catch up move compared to previous generations but wont be aiming for outright leadership any time soon.

 

Also, AVX-512.  

[Lightwreather]

Update: it's real alright
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16822/intel-launches-xeon-w-3300-3365-ice-lake-workstations-38-core

[RejZoR]

This would be interesting if ThreadRipper 5000 series never existed. But it's coming next month. With 64 cores and 128 threads rocking Zen 3 architecture. Good luck Intel, you'll need it.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Ha!

nice joke intel.

38c on ice lake will totally be able to beat a 64c on zen 2 or zen 3

[igormp]

On 7/15/2021 at 7:51 AM, leadeater said:

It's a little odd on the workstation side as far as I know Intel hasn't nearly lost as much ground there and there has been much less uptake of TR by the large vendors. I think Lenovo is the only big one really pushing TR at all.

 

Not sure why, suspect it's mostly to do with I/O and existing designs being very Intel reliant on some of the features, or maybe workstation users are less risk takers and adverse to switching when realistically the gains actually aren't so drastic you basically have to 

I guess that's mostly due to the regular threarippers not accepting registered ECC and only having 4 channels of memory, which limits you to 256gb of ram, against the 1tb+ of xeons.

 

TR Pro fixes that, and that's the model lenovo sells in their workstations. I hope that the new TRs come by default with 8 channels and support for RDIMMS, then maybe the transition to AMD's platform will get more traction.

[BuckGup]

I bet it's hell to work at intel. Hey that's sorta catchy but seriously, I bet managers are breathing down engineers necks demanding more yesterday and most just quit or find a job somewhere else 

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

This would be interesting if ThreadRipper 5000 series never existed. But it's coming next month. With 64 cores and 128 threads rocking Zen 3 architecture. Good luck Intel, you'll need it.

Yeah, they are playing heavy catchup just trying to mitigate losses in the short/moderate term.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, igormp said:

I guess that's mostly due to the regular threarippers not accepting registered ECC and only having 4 channels of memory, which limits you to 256gb of ram, against the 1tb+ of xeons.

 

TR Pro fixes that, and that's the model lenovo sells in their workstations. I hope that the new TRs come by default with 8 channels and support for RDIMMS, then maybe the transition to AMD's platform will get more traction.

True but it's still odd there weren't any. Like take for example HP Z series, the lower end of that workstation line uses regular Core i CPU and equivalent Xeon all limited to dual channel 128GB maximum. So there was room for lower and mid range workstations as those already exist.

 

TR Pro address the very upper end of that market but the buyer of a Z240/Z440 is very different from a Z840 (different model names now but I know that generation better).

[cj09beira]

20 hours ago, RejZoR said:

This would be interesting if ThreadRipper 5000 series never existed. But it's coming next month. With 64 cores and 128 threads rocking Zen 3 architecture. Good luck Intel, you'll need it.

its been quite a while, they really should have skipped threadripper pro zen 2 and launched zen 3 threaripper pro and normal instead, if the pattern continues they might launch zen 3 threadripper pro close to zen 4's launch

i wonder how they will handle the zen 3 3d version of threadripper, will they launch it together with zen 3? wait a while?