Intel has finally unveiled the long-awaited Sapphire Rapids upgrade to the Xeon family of processors along with the company’s new datacenter graphics processor.
Both are now available as the Max series and will soon be installed in famous supercomputers such as the Aurora from Argonne National Laboratory.
“To ensure no [high performance computing] The HPC workload is lagging behind, we need a solution that maximizes throughput, maximizes computing power, maximizes developer productivity and ultimately maximizes impact, ”explained Jeff McVeigh, vice president, Intel Super Compute Group.
Intel Xeon Max series
In press release (opens in a new tab) On the Intel website, it explains that such supercomputers play a key role in some of the world’s greatest scientific and societal challenges, “from climate change mitigation to treating the world’s most dangerous diseases.”
Accordingly, the latest chips have received a huge boost. The Max series GPU is the company’s highest-density processor, now offering up to 128GB of high-bandwidth memory in the form of over 100 billion transistors in a 128-core 47-plate form factor.
The latest GPUs will be available in three forms: GPU Max Series 1100, 1350 GPU and 1550 GPU, each with 48 GB, 96 GB and 128 GB of memory respectively.
Likewise, the 350-watt Xeon Max processor includes 64GB of high-bandwidth memory in a four-wafer configuration with up to 56 high-performance cores based on the same Golden Cove microarchitecture as Intel 12th generation processors.
The new hardware will support DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link (CXL) 1.1, which will allow the memory to be directly connected to the CPU via PCIe 5.0.
McVeigh admitted delays in the company’s new supercomputer components, noting that: “We will always push the boundaries. Sometimes it makes us maybe not achieving it, but we do it to help our developers by helping the ecosystem solve the problems [the world’s] the greatest challenges ”.
Intel now forecasts production of Xeon processors and Data Center Max Series graphics processors in early 2023, when shipments begin to Argonne, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Kyoto University and other supercomputing centers.