X13 Pre-Release Updates
The X13 Pre-Release Update on November 17th, 2022, discussed the upcoming release of the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor (Formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids), which will be available in many of Supermicro’s product lines in early 2023.
Overview
Supermicro has the industry’s broadest range of servers. Currently featuring the 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® scalable processors, these servers deliver first-to-market innovation for enterprise, cloud, AI, and 5G telco/edge IT infrastructures. Supemicro’s range of servers will be upgraded with the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® scalable processor in 2023. In addition, the state-of-the-art technology of the X13 servers and storage systems brings new performance levels to Supermicro’s wide range of product lines.
Introducing the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor
The 4th Gen Intel Xeon® Scalable processor delivers a range of processing options and intelligent performance capabilities, including Intel’s Turbo Boost technology 2.0 and Hyper-Threading technology, as well as enhanced performance to integer/matrix calculations through Intel’s Advanced Vector Extension (AVX).
The 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor offers numerous improvements, including exceptional performance, enhanced media, improved graphic capabilities, and more flexibility. As a result, this processor is ideal for a variety of network appliances and other communication devices. In addition, security algorithms will benefit from hardware acceleration for data encryption and decryption with an enhanced version of Intel’s Advanced Encryption Standard Instructions (AES-NI).
X13 Advantages
Resource-Saving Architecture: One benefit of the move to the X13 is its resource-saving architecture. Data centers use a tremendous amount of electricity (currently estimated at between 1% and 3% globally), with an expectation to grow by up to 8% by 2030. Reducing energy consumption in data centers is both good for the environment and good for business. X13 systems are both workload-optimized and energy efficient.
Rack-Scale Plug-and-Play: Supermicro’s rack-scale plug-and-play solution delivers predefined and pretested configurations to help scale data centers. Supermicro delivers L12 rack-scale plug-and-play solutions by providing expertise and building block architecture to deliver a fully tested cluster to quickly deploy simply by plugging in power and networking. A ready to deploy a completely tested and validated solution with minimal lead time and a faster time to production, resulting in lower OPEX and a lower TCO.
Higher Ambient Operating Temperatures: Incorporating the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor creates a performance optimization and energy efficient (air and liquid cooled) server. These systems support high-ambient temperature environments up to 40° C (104° F), with servers designed for air and liquid cooling for optimal efficiency.
Features
Some high-level features of the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor include the following:
PCIe 5.0
The next generation of PCIe, PCIe 5.0 is a high-speed interface that can connect a variety of components such as graphics processing units (GPUs), self-encrypting drives (SEDs), and Ethernet hardware. PCIe 5.0 is twice as fast as PCIe 4.0, with a maximum data transfer rate of 32 GT/s, a maximum unidirectional bandwidth of 64 GB/s, and a maximum bidirectional bandwidth of 128 GB/s.
DDR5
The fifth generation of Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access memory, DDR5 provides new features for higher performance, lower power, and more robust data integrity for the next decade of computing. DDR5 provides up to 1.5x bandwidth improvement over DDR4 to deliver continued bandwidth, capacity, and power efficiency scaling.
Compute Express Link (CXL)
A processor added to the peripheral/accelerator link protocol, Compute Express Link (CXL), provides extra functionality above the existing PCIe protocol to allow coherent communication between two sides. A CXL link enables efficient, low-latency, high-bandwidth performance when used with look-aside or inline accelerators for heterogeneous computing.
High Bandwidth Memory
The 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor provides higher bandwidth memory (HBM) to accelerate memory bandwidth sensitive workloads and can integrate up to 64 GB of HBM2e memory. Offering applications up to four times more memory, the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor provides generational performance improvement of up to 2.8 times over the 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor.
Accelerator Engines in 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
Like the 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor, the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor also offers a balanced architecture with built-in acceleration and advanced security capabilities. In addition, this architecture increases the effectiveness of cores by offloading common mode tasks via seamlessly integrated accelerator engines, which includes:
- Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX): Intel’s next-generation built-in Intel Deep Learning (DL) Boost advancement provides deep learning inference and training performance. Intel’s AMX improves the performance of deep learning workloads on processors.
- Intel® Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA): This feature offloads common data movement tasks that cause the overhead seen in data-center-scale deployments. In addition, it also Improves the processing overhead tasks to deliver increased workload performance and can move data among CPU, memory, and caches, as well as all attached memory, storage, and network devices.
- Intel® QuickAssist Technology (QAT): This feature significantly increases the performance and efficiency of standard platform solutions in the cloud, networking, big data, and storage. Apps using high-performance accelerators enabled by Intel’s QAT will use reduced CPU utilization and increase performance for encryption, secure client tunnels, and secure storage compression.
- Intel® vRAN Boost: This feature is a unique signal processing instruction enhancement in the processor’s core. Built to support RAN-specific signal processing, vRAN boost will deliver up to two times the capacity gains for vRAN and support advanced capabilities, such as high-cell density for 64T64R Massive MIMO.
After the webinar
This webinar is designed to inform audiences about the upcoming release of the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor and how it will be implemented in Supermicro’s servers. In addition, Supermicro offers the following two programs to help you get more information about this release.
Jumpstart program
We invite you to check out the roll out of Supermicro’s top-end X13 systems with our JumpStart program for early NDA remote access. This program allows you to validate, test, and benchmark your workloads with a few simple steps.
Early Ship Program
The Early ship program provides early access to the next generation of Intel CPUs for approved customers. These are full production units. Please contact your Supermicro sales representative for more information.