Intel starts shipping Xeon Gold 6138P with integrated Arria 10 FPGA

[Coaxialgamer]

Intel has recently started shipping their xeon scalable gold 6138P with an on-package arria 10 gx1150 FPGA ( 1.15M logic elements ) . The cpu is the same as the regular Xeon gold 6138 , with 20 cores and 40 threads ,based on the (revised) skylake architecture and is dual socket capable.

The whole on-package FPGA idea has been floating around for quite some time now ( intel demoed a broadwell chip featuring the tech a while back ). It was actually one of the main drivers of intel's EMIB and omnipath interconnect technologies .

Quote

Part of the story behind the Xeon Scalable platform, built upon server-level Skylake processing cores with AVX-512 and a new mesh topology, was that the CPU was designed to be partnered with additional silicon in the same package. Out of the gate immediately were versions bundled with Intel’s OmniPath controller, allowing for networking fabric connections. There has always been expectation that Intel will launch a Xeon Scalable processor with an integrated Intel Altera FPGA on the same package, and now that expectation has become reality. Intel is now shipping its Xeon Gold 6138P processor with a built-in Altera Arria 10 GX 1150 FPGA.

Back at Supercomputing 2016, Intel demonstrated what supposed to be a Broadwell-based Xeon system with a built in FPGA into the same package, however no real details were given and the chip itself was not on display. This year, at Mobile World Congress (of all places), Intel had a demonstration system showing a Xeon Scalable processor with a built in FPGA into the same package, but again the chip was not on display, only a processor that supposedly had the chip in. I was not allowed to use my screwdriver to open the system up. The Intel attendant next to the system was discussing that the platform would help accelerate Edge Computing for data used by 5G networks, although discussions about the finer details of how many SKUs, the size of the FPGA, and other elements were met with a refusal to answer. As a result, I didn’t post anything at MWC; I could not confirm anything that was being said and Intel was not prepared to say any more.

Quote

Intel is connecting the Xeon processor to the FPGA with 160 Gbps of bandwidth per socket (doesn’t state if this is bi-directional) using a cache coherent interconnect. From the way that we know that the Intel OmniPath Fabric connects in package to an Xeon, this connection likely implements a different protocol over the PCIe x16 interface reserved for in-package components, but also takes advantage of Intel’s Ultra-Path Interconnect (UPI) for cache coherency and access to data across the platform. This may mean that this reduces Xeon+FPGA setups to dual socket at best, if one UPI link from the processor is in use for the FPGA, however Intel did not provide briefings on the new parts to confirm this. We can confirm from an old Intel slide that the platform should be using a High Speed Serial Interface (HSSI) for connectivity; this slide also states that the new processors have different power specifications to standard Skylake-SP sockets, and as such the Xeon Gold 6138P is probably unlikely to be a drop in processor to current systems.

source : https://www.anandtech.com/show/12773/intel-shows-xeon-scalable-gold-6138p-with-integrated-fpga-shipping-to-vendors

[Taf the Ghost]

20c/40t parts would be the highest yield/lowest margin of Intel's largest die design. This is a pretty good product to sell at high margins for them.

 

What, you thought it had much purpose beyond that?  /sarc

 

It'll be interesting to see the use cases for these, as I imagine there's some wonky ones.

[Vode]

Funny that in the Anandtech article the price reads:

 

"Arm/Leg"

 

LOL

[Sauron]

Why do you need an FPGA in the same room as a 20 core xeon?

[Vode]

7 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

1U server price: Two kidneys, three livers, and five corneas

Comes without any system memory.

 

That will cost you the blood of your kid.

[bcredeur97]

44 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why do you need an FPGA in the same room as a 20 core xeon?

cryptocurrency mining

 

LOL /jk

[Coaxialgamer]

55 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

okay back on topic: what's an Intel Alteria? o_o

Altera* is a company that designs FPGA chips . It was aquired by intel a couple years ago

 

59 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why do you need an FPGA in the same room as a 20 core xeon?

FPGA's are seemingly more efficient for some specific applications

[Coaxialgamer]

15 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

cryptocurrency mining

 

LOL /jk

the funny thing is that there are some designs for dedicated SHA256/scrypt miners written for fpga

 

[bcredeur97]

7 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

the funny thing is that there are some designs for dedicated SHA256/scrypt miners written for fpga

 

theoretically it would work for other algo's too. It's just considered not as efficient as an ASIC so it's not really worth making dedicated FPGA's for mining now when you can just straight up make an ASIC that's 100x faster

 

still (usually) better than a GPU however. Depends on the algo.

[BuckGup]

1 hour ago, Coaxialgamer said:

the funny thing is that there are some designs for dedicated SHA256/scrypt miners written for fpga

 

Except they suck for it that's why people like antminer make their own

[ScratchCat]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

Why do you need an FPGA in the same room as a 20 core xeon?

To play old Atari games on while your simulations are running. /s

Specialised applications such as NICs.

1 hour ago, BuckGup said:

Except they suck for it that's why people like antminer make their own

It depends on the algorithm(s). If a coin used a system where the algorithm changed every few blocks an FPGA would be able to switch algorithm while ASICs would require a different ASIC for each algorithm.

[BuckGup]

Just now, ScratchCat said:

To play old Atari games on while your simulations are running. /s

Specialised applications such as NICs.

It depends on the algorithm(s). If a coin used a system where the algorithm changed every few blocks an FPGA would be able to switch algorithm while ASICs would require a different ASIC for each algorithm.

But they consume too much power

[ScratchCat]

Just now, BuckGup said:

But they consume too much power

In the case of switching algorithms FPGAs would still better than an ASICs which would simply take up space as they cannot process the new algorithm.

[Virus__]

16 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

okay back on topic: what's an Intel Alteria? o_o

Their alteria motive of course..

 

It's all good. I'll show myself out.

[leadeater]

17 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It'll be interesting to see the use cases for these, as I imagine there's some wonky ones.

Cloud providers like AWS and anyone doing large scale Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) that needs high performance. The example given in the article was for network processing as the FPGA has direct connected ethernet, CPUs are rather bad at high performance low latency network processing btw. Other use case would be storage processing like erasure coding which is also a simple task but very demanding at very high performance.

 

FPGAs are great for those simple but very frequent processing jobs.

[Space Reptile]

oh cool it has an FPGA , now i can emulate a C64 or AMIGA 500 on my intel xeon , FINALLY 

[Coaxialgamer]

5 hours ago, Space Reptile said:

oh cool it has an FPGA , now i can emulate a C64 or AMIGA 500 on my intel xeon , FINALLY 

Hey at least you can run NES games in hardware on your 30K $ machine now . No more pesky software emulation. /s

I mean people have spent 500$ for the analogue NT so crazier things could happen

[anotherriddle]

I think FPGAs are a great addition to conventional computing. I still believe an FPGA-pcie-card would be better. I would love to tinker with something like that, however FPGAs are bloody expensive and only a few have an opensource toolchain and other software.

[Coaxialgamer]

4 minutes ago, anotherriddle said:

I think FPGAs are a great addition to conventional computing. I still believe an FPGA-pcie-card would be better. I would love to tinker with something like that, however FPGAs are bloody expensive and only a few have an opensource toolchain and other software.

there are fairly inexpensive options out there .

I got a xilinx spartan 3E based board for less than 30$ , you just need to be ok with the lower LE and SRAM count

[anotherriddle]

1 hour ago, Coaxialgamer said:

there are fairly inexpensive options out there .

I got a xilinx spartan 3E based board for less than 30$ , you just need to be ok with the lower LE and SRAM count

You are my hero, I didn't know about those! This is amazing, I have to read into this. Mind you, I am just some student that likes to tinker with stuff and have already too many projects on my hand but this just too useful. There go a couple of weekends

[Coaxialgamer]

39 minutes ago, anotherriddle said:

You are my hero, I didn't know about those! This is amazing, I have to read into this. Mind you, I am just some student that likes to tinker with stuff and have already too many projects on my hand but this just too useful. There go a couple of weekends

plus , the lower end FPGA's usually work with the free versions of altera and Xilinx software . Just be prepared to go through debugging hell with often older software ;D

[TopHatProductions115]

All I know is, I want one!

 

[anotherriddle]

8 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Just be prepared to go through debugging hell with often older software ;D

yeah, I know thanks a lot

[Granular]

Cool, highly integrated beans!

I wonder if/when there will be consumer processors or Intel SBCs with on package FPGAs. Makes me think of how badly I'd like the money and time to make a Novena laptop work for me.