Intel launches 3rd Gen Ice Lake Intel Xeon Scalable processor for data centers

Intel on Tuesday unveiled its 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors for the cloud, edge computing, networking, and high-performance computing, during the company’s virtual “How Wonderful Gets Done 2021” launch program held earlier today.

Built on the company’s Ice Lake-SP core architecture, the new processor is manufactured on the 10nm process technology – Intel says these are the first data centre CPUs on its 10nm fabrication process. Each socket of the processor offers support for up to 6 terabytes of system memory, eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory, and up to 64 lanes on PCIe Gen4, according to the company.

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Building on improvements made to the company's previous offerings, Intel says it has made enhancements across the board including built-in AI acceleration, security, and crypto acceleration. As opposed to 28 cores per processor on the previous generation processors, Intel has upped the core count to 40 cores per processor. It must be noted that this is still far behind AMD’s EPYC platform, which supports up to 64 cores.

Intel says it has partnered with over 50 Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to ensure it launches on their platforms – while working with every major cloud service provider for Ice Lake-powered services.

The company has also focused on security and cryptography performance improvements with this year’s portfolio. The company is boasting new instructions for Crypto Acceleration (first announced in 2018), which it says will preserve system performance and response times while running intensive encryption-related workloads.

The new generation of Ice Lake CPUs also boasts improvements to Software Guard Extensions to protect sensitive code, secure enclaves to isolate and process up to 1TB of code and new features like Total Memory Encryption and Platform Firmware Resilience.

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As the only data center CPU with AI acceleration built-in, the company claims it can deliver 74 percent faster AI performance, with 1.5 times higher performance across a mix of 20 well-known AI workloads — compared to previous generations. On the network front, the company says that compared to the previous generation, the new 3rd Gen processors promise 62% improved performance on average, for large-scale networks and handling 5G workloads.

“The future of technology is being shaped by several inflections, including the proliferation of the cloud, AI, the rapid adoption of 5G and computing at the edge. As the pace of this digital disruption accelerates, Intel’s technology and leadership products are more critical than ever,” said Prakash Mallya, VP and MD – Sales, Marketing and Communications Group, Intel India. 

“Intel’s new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors deliver flexible architecture with built-in acceleration and advanced security capabilities that are essential in a world of workload diversification and growing complexity. Our robust ecosystem and broad portfolio of purpose-built solutions ensure customers can rapidly deploy Intel-based infrastructure optimized for the most demanding workloads,” he added.