Intel releases new Xeon 6 processor, opening a new chapter in the data center

In news on April 10, 2024, Intel announced its next-generation new product brand for data centers, cloud and edge computing-"Xeon 6" (Xeon 6). This series of processors was previously codenamed Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids. This generation of Xeon 6 processor series will provide powerful processing capabilities and high scalability to meet growing data processing needs. Intel regards it as an important tool to promote digital transformation, artificial intelligence, big data analysis and high-performance computing on a global scale. The Xeon 6 series processors will adopt a new architecture and advanced process technology to provide higher performance, lower energy consumption and higher reliability. This series of processors will provide data centers, cloud service providers and enterprise customers with more powerful computing capabilities

Intel has released the first generation of Xeon Scalable since 2017 Since the launch of its processor (codenamed Skylake), the company has continued to make progress in processor technology. At the beginning and end of 2023, Intel successively launched the fourth-generation Sapphire Rapids and fifth-generation Emerald Rapids processors. As industry needs and technology evolve, Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids, which were originally supposed to be conventionally named the sixth-generation Xeon scalable processors, were succinctly renamed "Xeon 6" by Intel.

The editor understands that Xeon 6 Sierra Forest is hailed as a major change in the history of Xeon processors. For the first time, it adopts a pure energy-efficiency core (E-core) design, which can be configured with up to 288 cores and 832 threads. It mainly optimizes efficiency and is particularly suitable for handling high-density and scalable workloads. Compared with the second-generation Xeon processor, Sierra Forest has improved energy efficiency by 2.4 times and increased rack density by 2.7 times. In addition, customers are able to replace and upgrade older systems at a 3:1 ratio and significantly reduce power consumption. It is estimated that reducing the number of racks from 200 to 72 can save up to 1 million kilowatt hours of energy consumption per year, which is enough to power more than 1,300 households for an entire year.

On the other hand, Xeon 6 Granite Rapids focuses on performance optimization and is suitable for compute-intensive and AI workloads. It will add software support for the MXFP4 data format, be able to run the 70 billion parameter Llama 2 large model, and reduce command latency by up to 6.5 times. The two new processors are expected to be released in the second quarter of this year and shortly thereafter.

In addition, Intel also confirmed that it will launch its next-generation Core Ultra client processor code-named Lunar Lake within this year. This processor integrates CPU, GPU, and NPU, with a platform computing power of more than 100 TOPS, of which the NPU unit has a computing power of more than 46 TOPS, providing more powerful support for the new generation of AI PCs. It is expected that in 2024, there will be more than 230 consumer and commercial terminal products based on Core Ultra processors. At the same time, nearly 100 ISV software manufacturers will develop more than 300 exclusive AI acceleration functions for this processor. According to Intel's forecast, more than 100 million processors with AI acceleration capabilities will be shipped by the end of 2025.

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