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Intel Sampling Xeon D 14nm
Intel has announced that it is sampling its Xeon D 14nm processor family, a system on chip (SoC) optimized to deliver Intel Xeon processor performance for hyperscale workloads.
Announcing the news on stage during a keynote at IDF in San Francisco, Intel SVP and GM of the Data Centre Group, Diane Bryant, said that the Intel Xeon processor D, which initially was announced in June, will be based on 14nm process technology and be aimed at mid-range communications.
“We’re pleased to announce that we’re sampling the third generation of the high density [data center system on a chip] product line, but this one is actually based on the Xeon processor, called Xeon D,” Bryant announced. “It’s 14nm and the power levels go down to as low as 15 Watts, so very high density and high performance.”
Intel believes that its Xeon D will serve the needs of high density, optimized servers as that market develops, and for networking it will serve mid-range routers as well as other network appliances, while it will also serve entry and mid-range storage. So, Intel claimed, you will get all of the benefits of Xeon-class reliability and performance, but you will also get a very small footprint and high integration of SoC capability.
This first generation Xeon D chip will also showcase high levels of I/O integrations, including 10Gb Ethernet, and will scale Intel Xeon processor performance, features and reliability to lower power design points, according to Intel.
The Intel Xeon processor D product family will also include data centre processor features such as error correcting code (ECC).
“With high levels of I/O integration and energy efficiency, we expect the Intel Xeon processor D product family to deliver very competitive TCO to our customers,” Bryant said. “The Intel Xeon processor D product family will also be targeted toward hyperscale storage for cloud and mid-range communications market.”
Bryant said that the product is not yet available, but it is being sampled, and the firm will release more details later this year.
This announcement comes just days after Intel launched its Xeon E5 v2 processor family for servers and workstations.
Vendors Testing New Xeon Processors
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Intel is cooking up a hot batch of Xeon processors for servers and workstations, and system vendors have already designed systems that are ready and raring to go as soon as the chips become available.
Boston is one of the companies doing just that, and we know this because it gave us an exclusive peek into its labs to show off what these upgraded systems will look like. While we can’t share any details about the new chips involved yet, we can preview the systems they will appear in, which are awaiting shipment as soon as Intel gives the nod.
Based on chassis designs from Supermicro, with which Boston has a close relationship, the systems comprise custom-built solutions for specific user requirements.
On the workstation side, Boston is readying a mid-range and a high-end system with the new Intel Xeon chips, both based on two-socket Xeon E5-2600v3 rather than the single socket E5-1600v3 versions.
There’s also the mid-range Venom 2301-12T, which comes in a mid-tower chassis and ships with an Nvidia Quadro K4000 card for graphics acceleration. It comes with 64GB of memory and a 240GB SSD as a boot device, plus two 1TB Sata drives configured as a Raid array for data storage.
For extra performance, Boston has also prepared the Venom 2401-12T, which will ship with faster Xeon processors, 128GB of memory and an Nvidia Quadro K6000 graphics card. This also has a 240GB SSD as a boot drive, with two 2TB drives configured as a Raid array for data storage.
Interestingly, Intel’s new Xeon E5-2600v3 processors are designed to work with 2133MHz DDR4 memory instead of the more usual DDR3 RAM, and as you can see in the picture below, DDR4 DIMM modules have slightly longer connectors towards the middle.
For servers, Boston has prepared a 1U rack-mount “pizza box” system, the Boston Value 360p. This is a two-socket server with twin 10Gbps Ethernet ports, support for 64GB of memory and 12Gbps SAS Raid. It can also be configured with NVM Express (NVMe) SSDs connected to the PCI Express bus rather than a standard drive interface.
Boston also previewed a multi-node rack server, the Quattro 12128-6, which is made up of four separate two-socket servers inside a 2U chassis. Each node has up to 64GB of memory, with 12Gbps SAS Raid storage plus a pair of 400GB SSDs.
Intel Discusses SoFIA
Intel has shed more light on its upcoming SoFIA SoC, which stands for Smart of Feature Phone with Intel Architecture. For SEO purposes we’ll just call it Sophie.
The SoFIA project is being spearheaded by Intel’s Singapore office and CNET had a chance to catch up with recent developments. The chip was announced back in December, but details were sketchy and to some extent they still are.
SoFIA is going after MediaTek and Qualcomm in the mainstream and entry level segments. It features a dual-core Silvermont processor on a 28nm die. This is where it gets interesting, as Intel simply doesn’t do 28nm. SoFIA will be manufactured by TSMC instead, but Intel is planning to build SoFIA chips in-house in the future. The company has already made it clear that it is moving to 14nm, so there is a good chance the next generation chip will be a 14nm design churned out by Intel fabs.
SoFIA has an integrated 3G modem, but a 4G version is coming later. Bluetooth and WiFi are on other chips. Lack of 4G connectivity might not be a big deal for potential SoFIA customers, as the chip is supposed to go after entry level smartphone designs. Intel told CNET that SoFIA could pave the way to $50 smartphones in Asian markets and realistically nobody expects a $50 phone to feature 4G connectivity.
It is hard to say anything about SoFIA’s real-world performance. Quad-core tablet processors based on the Silvermont architecture can still hold their ground against many high-end ARM SoCs, so a dual-core version optimised for smartphones should have no trouble keeping up with lesser ARM parts.
Intel Outs New Xeon Chipset
Intel has released details about its new Xeon E7 v2 chipset. The Xeon processor E7 8800/4800/2800 v2 product family is designed to support up to 32-socket servers with configurations of up to 15 processing cores and up to 1.5 terabytes of memory per socket.
The chip is designed for the big data end of the Internet of Things movement, which the processor maker projected will grow to consist of at least 30 billion devices by 2020. Beyond two times better performance power, Intel is promising a few other upgrades with the next generation of this data-focused chipset, including triple the memory capacity, four times the I/O bandwidth and the potential to reduce total cost of ownership by up to 80 percent.
The 15-core variants with the largest thermal envelope (155W) run at 2.8GHz with 37.5MB of cache and 8 GT/s QuickPath connectivity. The lowest-power models in the list have 105W TDPs and run at 2.3GHz with 24MB of cache and 7.2 GT/s of QuickPath bandwidth. There was also talk of 40W, 1.4GHz models at ISSCC but they have not been announced yet.
Intel has signed on nearly two dozen hardware partners to support the platform, including Asus, Cisco, Dell, EMC, and Lenovo. On the software end, Microsoft, SAP, Teradata, Splunk, and Pivotal also already support the new Xeon family. IBM and Oracle are among the few that support Xeon E7 v2 on both sides of the spectrum.
Google Goes Quantum
When is a blink not a natural blink? For Google the question has such ramifications that it has devoted a supercomputer to solving the puzzle.
Slashgear reports that the internet giant is using its $10 million quantum computer to find out how products like Google Glass can differentiate between a natural blink and a deliberate blink used to trigger functionality.
The supercomputer based at Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is a joint venture with NASA and is being used to refine the algorithms used for new forms of control such as blinking. The supercomputer uses D-Wave chips kept at as near to absolute zero as possible, which makes it somewhat impractical for everyday wear but amazingly fast at solving brainteasers.
A Redditor reported earlier this year that Google Glass is capable of taking pictures by responding to blinking, however the feature is disabled in the software code as the technology had not advanced enough to differentiate between natural impulse and intentional request.
It is easy to see the potential of blink control. Imagine being able to capture your life as you live it, exactly the way you see it, without anyone ever having to stop and ask people to say “cheese”.
Google Glass is due for commercial release next year but for the many beta testers and developers who already have one this research could lead to an even richer seam of touchless functionality.
If nothing else you can almost guarantee that Q will have one ready for Daniel Craig’s next James Bond outing.
Intel Releases 16GB Xeon Phi
Intel has announced five Xeon Phi accelerators including a high density add-in card while upping memory capacity to 16GB.
Intel has managed to get its Xeon Phi accelerator cards to power the Tianhe-2 cluster to the summit of the Top 500 list, however the firm isn’t waiting around to bring out new products. At the International Supercomputing show, Intel extended its Xeon Phi range with five new products, all of which have more than one TFLOPS double precision floating point performance, and the Xeon Phi 7120P and 7120X cards, which have 16GB of GDDR5 memory.
Intel’s Xeon Phi 7120P and 7120X cards have peak double precision floating point performance of over 1.2 TFLOPS, with 352GB/s bandwidth to the 16GB of GDDR5 memory. The firm also updated its more modest Xeon Phi 3100 series with the 3120P and 3120A cards, both with more than one TFLOPS of double precision floating point performance and 6GB of GDDR5 memory with bandwidth of 240GB/s.
Intel has also brought out the Xeon Phi 5120D, a high density card that uses mini PCI-Express slots. The firm said that the Xeon Phi 5120D card offers double precision floating point performance of more than one TFLOPS and 8GB of GDDR5 memory with bandwidth greater than 300GB/s.
That Intel is concentrating on double precision floating point performance with its Xeon Phi accelerators highlights the firm’s focus on research rather than graphics rendering or workstation tasks. However the firm’s ability to pack 16GB into its Xeon Phi 7100 series cards is arguably the most important development, as larger locally addressable memory means higher resolution simulations.
Intel clearly seems to believe that there is significant money to be made in the high performance PC market, and despite early reservations from industry observers the firm seems to be ramping up its Xeon Phi range at a rate that will start to give rival GPGPU accelerator designer Nvidia cause for concern.
Haswell Refresh Coming Next Year
Intel has been executing its tick tock strategy flawlessly since January 2006 and now there is some indication that we might see the first slip in 8 years come 2014. Intel’s latest roadmap claims that in 12 months from now, in Q2 2014 Haswell will be replaced by a “Haswell refresh”.
Haswell is a tock, a 22nm new architecture and Broadwell is supposed to be based on Haswell fundamentals, but shrunk to 14nm like a proper “tock”. In case that the Haswell refresh is a tweaked 22nm core, this would mean that after 7 years of execution and billions of investments in cutting edge fabrication processes, Intel would have to slow things down.
It is not certain what would happen to 2015 Skylake, a new 14nm architecture, or the 10nm Skymont that is supposed to be the shrink, but in case Broadwell gets pushed back by a year there is a big possibility that the whole roadmap would slip a year.
When it gets ready the Haswell refresh (possibly a disguise name for Broadwell ed.) is replacing Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Pentium and Celeron based Haswell chips, some sooner rather than later.
The chipset responsible for Haswell refresh is already branded as Z97 and H97 in desktop versions replacing the Z87 and H87 boards proving that the socket are likely to continue existing at least through 2014. It will be interesting to see the developments and if Broadwell is really delayed or this is just game of words on Intel’s part.
Does Haswell Need A Separate GPU?
Nvidia actually has a person with the catchy title of Chief Blogger and this person managed to get “an interview” with Rene Haas a VP and GM of computing products that currently takes care of Geforce mobile among other things.
Rene was asked to explain “why Gamers still need a discrete GPU with Haswell” and the answer is as logical as why do you use a seatbelt. Rene expects that Intel will continue to suck in graphics (our words not his ed.) and that that most popular games won’t play well on Haswell at standard resolution.
It seems that history really does repeat itself, as Intel had big claims for both Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge had been struggling to run new games of their time. Any serious gamers know that the answer is a proper discrete GPU. Haswell won’t change that, claims Rene.
It looks like Nvidia will have at least as many design wins as with Ivy Bridge, and Ivy Bridge was the record number or design wins for Nvidia. Rene claims that with this refresh Nvidia will have as much as 95 per cent of the gaming notebook which is nothing short of spectacular.
Rene also attacks Intel boldly claiming that “Their (Intel) comparison is misleading on a number of fronts.” Commenting the fact that Intel claims that GT3e will be faster than Geforce GT 650M. Intel based its claims on synthetic benchmarks, something that can be optimised, while Nvidia prefers real games, and even if GT3 wins again Geforce GT650, the new Geforce GT 750 is much faster than its predecessor and will have double the performance of GT3e in games.
Rene reminds us that GT3e is only available in top quad core mobile cores such as Core i7 4880QM that usually find their place in $3,000 notebooks. Rene tells customers that getting a Core i5 of Core i3 notebook with a better discrete GPU is the right way to get better gaming performance, although the vast majority of consumers already know that.
We remember that the last time we sat down with Rene, he said that when Intel gets faster with Integrated, Nvidia will simply gets even better with its corresponding low-end products and offers something faster. The cat and mouse game never ends.
Intel Releases More Celeron CPUs
Intel added three curious ultra-low voltage chips to its official price list and their official designations is strange.
All three are 22nm parts and their product numbers are N2805, N2810 and N2910, which seems to indicate that they are Atoms, but they are listed in the ULV Celeron M section, reports CPU World. The top SKU features four cores with no hyperthreading, which means that it is probably based on the new Valley View M core.
The N2805 is a dual-core clocked at 1.46GHz, with a single megabyte of cache. The N2810 is also a dual-core, but it’s clocked at 2GHz, while the N2910 is the previously mentioned quad-core, with 2MB of cache and a clock speed of 1.6GHz. All of them are priced at $132, which sounds like way too much for Atom branded parts.
With Temash and Kabini just around the corner, Intel needs to step up its game in the low-end low-voltage market fast, but at this point it seems that AMD be the first to market and it will enjoy at least a few months on top. Even when Intel launches its first 22nm Atoms, it won’t have an easy time matching AMD’s price or performance.
Should Investors Dump AMD?
If you have any old AMD shares lying around you might like to sell them as fast as you can, according to the bean counters at Goldman Sachs.
Despite the fact that the company is doing rather well, and its share price is has gone up rapidly over recent months, Goldman Sach analysts claim that the writing is on the wall for AMD. It thinks that AMD shares will be worth just $2.50 soon. The stock’s 50-day moving average is currently $2.98.
The company said that while AMD could clean up in the gaming market even if you take those figures into account the stock is trading at 22 times its 2014 CY EPS estimate. In other words the company’s core PC business is still shagged and still will generate 45 per cent of the company’s 2013 revenue.
“We therefore believe this recent move in the stock is just the latest in a long history of unsustainable rallies, and we are downgrading the stock to Sell. We believe the current multiple is unjustified for any company with such significant exposure to the secularly declining PC market,” the firm’s analyst wrote.
Analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein think that the share price will settle on $2.00 and FBR Capital Markets thinks $3.00. In other words if you want to know what is really happening at AMD you might as well ask the cat, than any Wall Street expert.