Intel updates HPC processor roadmap

Intel kicked off the Supercomputing 2023 conference with a series of high performance computing (HPC) announcements, including a new Xeon line and Gaudi AI processor.

Intel will ship its fifth-generation Xeon Scalable Processor, codenamed Emerald Rapids, to OEM partners on December 14. Emerald Rapids features a maximum core count of 64 cores, up slightly from the 56-core fourth-gen Xeon.

In addition to more cores, Emerald Rapids will feature higher frequencies, hardware acceleration for FP16, and support 12 memory channels, including the new Intel-developed MCR memory that is considerably faster than standard DDR5 memory.

According to benchmarks that Intel provided, the top-of-the-line Emerald Rapids outperformed the top-of-the-line fourth gen CPU with a 1.4x gain in AI speech recognition and a 1.2x gain in the FFMPEG media transcode workload. All in all, Intel claims a 2x to 3x improvement in AI workloads, a 2.8x boost in memory throughput, and a 2.9x improvement in the DeepMD+LAMMPS AI inference workload.

Intel also provided some details on the upcoming Gaudi 3 processor for AI inferencing. Gaudi 3 will be the last of the standalone Guadi accelerators before the company merges Gaudi with a GPU technology into a single product known as Falcon Shores.

The 5nm Gaudi 3 will have four times the performance in BF16 workloads than Gaudi 2, twice the networking (Gaudi 2 has 24x inbuilt 100 GbE RoCE Nics), and 1.5x more HBM capacity.