Intel Shipping Purley (Skylake-EP) Xeons, Just Not To You. Announces Lake Crest, Knights Crest

[It's me!]

So, Intel is playing preferential treatment and only sending its new Xeons to some customers, the rest half to wait half a year. It also announced some other new stuffs, namely Lake Crest and Knights Crest, which sound pretty cool to me. 

 

Quote

Intel professed its love for all things AI at its inaugural AI Day. Intel chose to christen the event with an unexpected announcement that it is already shipping the Purley generation, otherwise known as the Skylake-EP Xeons, to its besties and no one else. The company also announced its new Lake Crest and Knights Crest products. 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-xeon-skylake-cpu-storage,33054.html

[patrickjp93]

That's how the market has always worked. Google, Facebook, and Amazon always get the top new products first, because they are the highest volume customers Intel has.

[It's me!]

13 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

That's how the market has always worked. Google, Facebook, and Amazon always get the top new products first, because they are the highest volume customers Intel has.

Yes, they get early revs, but its unprecedented that Intel is shipping to them in volume 8 months ahead of everyone else. Also, there is word that they are ONLY seeding Google and Facebook. Anti-competitive behavior at its finest. 

[Commodus]

Me, I just hope this means we're one step closer to updated Mac Pros.  Part of why Apple has been sitting on upgrades for so long is that Intel's Xeon update schedule is glacially slow, and even the updates that arrive aren't always meaningful improvements.

 

(With that said: please, Apple, feel free to upgrade GPUs and storage in between CPU refreshes).

[patrickjp93]

2 minutes ago, It's me! said:

Yes, they get early revs, but its unprecedented that Intel is shipping to them in volume 8 months ahead of everyone else. Also, there is word that they are ONLY seeding Google and Facebook. Anti-competitive behavior at its finest. 

No it's not. This happened with Nehalem and ivy Bridge too (source: Keith Frikken, Google DBA).

 

No, they're seeding Amazon and several others too. All the huge customers get fed at once, and that drains Intel's inventory, and then second round of sales begins for everyone else. Intel has the biggest foundries in the world with the highest production, but that doesn't mean it can nor should afford having tens of billions of dollars' worth of inventory sitting around just to release all at once or have to suffer the backlash of being underprepared on supply channels to release to everyone the moment bulk production begins.

[patrickjp93]

2 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Me, I just hope this means we're one step closer to updated Mac Pros.  Part of why Apple has been sitting on upgrades for so long is that Intel's Xeon update schedule is glacially slow, and even the updates that arrive aren't always meaningful improvements.

 

(With that said: please, Apple, feel free to upgrade GPUs and storage in between CPU refreshes).

Xeons update just as often as desktop, but the architectural progressions are a staggered schedule. It's about 1 year for every generation f every segment.