Intel unveils Xeon 6 processors with up to 144 E-cores

Intel unveiled a new family of server processors dubbed Xeon 6. Specifically, the 6700E series uses only E-cores for the purpose of cramming as many cores as possible in a single socket –up to 144 cores in this case. This series is code named Sierra Forrest. Intel also has another series, Granite Rapids, which will bring Xeon 6 processors with P-cores, but that is coming in Q3 this year.

The Sierra Forrest offerings start with the Xeon 6 6710E, which features 64 Efficiency cores running at 2.4GHz base and 3.2GHz all-core turbo. Then there are two models with 96 cores, one each with 112 and 128 cores and finally two top of the line models.

The 6766E has 144 E-cores and a TDP of 250W, allowing it to run at 1.9GHz base frequency and 2.7GHz all-core turbo. Then there is the 6780E, also with 144 cores, but a higher TDP of 330W, so it has a base frequency of 2.2GHz and all-core turbo of 3.0GHz.

These last two have 108MB of L3 cache, but even the lowly 6710E has 96MB (in fact, all but the two 144 core models have 96MB). All Xeon 6 E-core processors also have plenty of PCIe 5.0 lanes – 88, to be precise.

Intel Xeon 6 E-cores (Sierra Forest)

Some workloads benefit from having many cores, not so much from any individual core being particularly fast. For such use cases, Intel says that the number of server racks can be reduced by 3 times. As an example, a server farm with 200 racks using processors from 5 years ago can now be whittled down to 66 racks.

Even better, rack-level performance will improve by up to 4.2x while using less power to boot – performance per watt will improve by up to 2.6x. There’s a reason these are called efficiency cores. Anyway, this is compared to older processors from Intel. Compared to current competition, Intel claims that the Xeon 6 with E-cores has 1.3x better performance per watt.

Other, heavier computation tasks (AI, computer vision, etc.) will benefit from the Granite Rapids series with more powerful (but presumably fewer) P-cores instead.

PS. Intel says that general availability of its Gaudi 3 AI accelerator is on track for Q3 this year.

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