Intel’s DPG Launch Event April 6th: Early Look at 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake)
by Dr. Ian Cutress on March 19, 2021 2:05 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Storage
- Networking
- Intel
- Xeon
- NAND
- Enterprise
- DRAM
- Optane
- AI
- Xeon Scalable
- ML
Today Intel has announced that it will be holding a launch event on April 6th for the new vision of its Data Platform Group. This event is set to ‘unveil the next chapter’ in all the areas that Intel’s DPG touches, from edge to cloud, as well as offering an early look at 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable systems, which we’ve come to understand is the Ice Lake Xeon platform. Key speakers at the event include Intel’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger.
Update 3/22:
Intel has formally clarified today that this event on April 6th will be the formal official launch of 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake). Official start time for the event is 8am PT on April 6th.
How Wonderful Gets Done 2021
Subtly dropped in my email today as part of the Intel weekly on data center progress, the company have announced a ‘How Wonderful Gets Done 2021’ event built upon the Data Platform Group’s progress as well as the vision for the segment of Intel looking to the future. The key headliner, present in our email but not on Intel’s website, is that the event will host an ‘early look at 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based systems’. It is unclear if this means CPUs or just OEM designs, or if we’ll see benchmarks, but it is clear that Intel’s OEM partners are practically ready to go based on some of the published data already available.
One of the accompanying videos on the event website is a 10 second montage of things forming the letter ‘X’, and the words ‘what will you solve for’.
The event will be held on Tuesday April 6th, starting at 8am PT, with keynotes from new Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, EVP and GM of DPG Navin Shenoy, and CVP and GM of the Xeon and Memory Group, Lisa Spelman.
Sessions for the day will include:
- AI, Wei Li, VP and GM of Machine Learning Performance, Design Engineering Group
- IoT, John Healy, VP IOTG, GM Platform Management and Customer Engineering
- 5G Networking, Dan Rodriguez, CVP and GM, Network Platforms Group
- HPC, Trish Damkroger, VP and GM HPC, Data Platfoms Group
- Cloud, Rebecca Weekly, VP and GM, Hyperscale Strategy; Senior Principle Engineer, DPG
Recently it was announced that Pat Gelsinger will be hosting an event on March 23rd, and in that announcement an image of an Ice Lake Xeon Scalable wafer was given as the title image for that announcement, perhaps indicating that the release of ICL-SP is close. Intel did say at the beginning of the year that ICL-SP is expected to launch ‘within months’, and a number of Intel’s partners are already starting to demonstrate systems with appropriate processor support.
We also learned recently that Intel has already shipped 115K+ (and more) Ice Lake Xeon Scalable processors to over 30 of its high-profile customers, even though the processors have not yet been launched. This is typical for a server processor, as these customers also help test, debug, and deploy the hardware at scale so it is ready to go from day one.
Similarly, in discussions with Intel, it is clear that the company is keen to promote its combined solution efforts to the market when it comes to the data center – Intel’s value, according to the company, is in its ability to provide the CPU, the networking, the memory, the storage, the AI accelerators, the software, the optimizations, the range of options, and the support structure that its competitors cannot. This combined solution Intel believes affords its customers a better TCO offering, as well as better optimized performance especially now that workloads are hitting a variety of bottlenecks such as storage, connectivity, and acceleration.
We are all set up for the event and will be watching along. If there are opportunities to ask questions, you bet we will.
Source: Intel
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Spunjji - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
Glad I'm not the only one who found that to have an even more turd-like mouthfeel than their usual advertising boilerplate. 🤢I'm especially in favour of burning all marketing output that uses adjectives as if they were nouns, like "find your happy". 🤮
Pinn - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
So this in a Mac Pro is a non-starter?Tomatotech - Saturday, March 20, 2021 - link
Very unlikely to see any more Mac models released or updated with Intel chips going forward. Apple will release new Macbook Pro models with their own Apple silicon later this year, then after that iMac and maybe maybe Mac Pro.(In case you didn't know, the current 13" Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, and Mac Mini all now have Apple's custom designed M1 chip which has been very well reviewed.)
Spunjji - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
That would only ever have been likely if it used the same platform. Given how long they kept the dustbin going, I doubt Apple would release a new Mac Pro platform only to send it to the junk heap in a year or two when they switch that product line over to ARM.JoeDuarte - Saturday, March 20, 2021 - link
It's strange how stalled they've been at 14nm and how much they've had to iterate 10nm. It will be interesting to see how Ice Lake Xeon performs in tests, and I don't have high expectations for it. With all their struggles with 10nm, I got the impression that it was only the third or fourth iteration of it that was expected to be any good, the SuperFin and Enhanced SuperFin, so Sapphire Rapids or whatever.I'm not sure that we'll ever get any exciting leaps from Intel again. Something is wrong, and I don't fully understand it. They can't execute on new process nodes anymore. Does anyone believe that they'll deliver 7nm to mainstream products by 2023? And that it will be excellent in terms of performance and power improvements? They don't seem to be able to do it anymore.
I hope they're able to develop the accelerators and I/O on 10nm+++ or whatever. That would be neat. They haven't done a good job of marketing technology like Quick Assist, the compression and encryption accelerator chip that is available on some of their SKUs. Hardly anyone knows that QA exists. People are wasting huge energy and CPU on compression and encryption when they don't have to, but Intel sucks at marketing. If they got clean-sheet chip designs on 10nm for these accelerators that would be a win. They should also push improved I/O instead of PCIe, technology like OpenCAPI which has much lower latency.
mode_13h - Saturday, March 20, 2021 - link
Tiger Lake seems decent. If they can get their 10+ nm yields up, I think a Xeon based on Willow Cove could keep them in the game.As for improved I/O, they're pushing CXL.
scineram - Saturday, March 20, 2021 - link
There is no such thing?drothgery - Monday, March 22, 2021 - link
I think Sapphire Rapids (late this year/early 2022) is based on Willow Cove?EthiaW - Sunday, March 21, 2021 - link
They do have a new low latency socket family named CXL.mode_13h - Sunday, March 21, 2021 - link
CXL = Compute Express LinkIt's had a fair amount of coverage on this site, if you care to search for it.