With the release of the new third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, it attracted the attention of the top tech companies worldwide.
Companies like Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent are planning to shift to this new hardware from Intel. These new hardware offerings are some of the most powerful to hit the market. They promise great hardware and software support, as well as upgrade AI portfolio.
New hardware for the server market
The server market is not exactly a mainstream one, but it is responsible for a huge chuck of Intel’s business. These hardware and software products usually sit inside a data center. With the world currently overrun with massive data, these products are becoming essential to the point of becoming a utility.
In a statement, Intel corporate vice president and general manager Lisa Spelman says:
“We remain committed to enhancing built-in AI acceleration and software optimizations within the processor that powers the world’s data center and edge solutions, as well as delivering an unmatched silicon foundation to unleash insight from data.”
The new Xeon Scalable processors have built-in AI acceleration features. It also supports bfloat16 or Brain Floating Point which is an integral part of developing machine learning technologies.
Along with the new Xeon Scalable processors, the chipmaker is also releasing several complementary hardware. On top of the list is the new Optane Persistent Memory 200 Series. These new pieces of hardware make it easy to deploy AI training on general-purpose computers.
In terms of performance, the new Optane technology supports up to 4.5TB of memory per individual socket. This is a massive upgrade that will neatly find its way to servers performing memory-intensive tasks.
Coming in 🔥. Our new Intel #Xeon W-2200 processors prove to be the ultimate platform for professional creators running data-intensive workloads—delivering reliability, manageability, and stability.https://t.co/nAaL2X35Kp pic.twitter.com/utCrxnFmMq
— Intel (@intel) October 7, 2019
Completing the lineup are three new 3D NAND SSDs for storage purposes. These high-capacity SSDs come in two different models. These are the Intel SSD D7-P5500 and the D7-P5600.
Lastly, Intel also highlighted some of its upcoming releases. Chief among which is the Stratix 10 NX FPGA. This is the company’s first AI-centric technology aimed towards high-bandwidth and low-latency AI acceleration projects.
Quick adoption from tech companies
One of the first big tech company to confirm its adoption of the new Xeon processors is Facebook. In May, the tech giant said that it is adopting Xeon Scalable processors for its new Open Compute Platform servers.
Tech companies on the other side of the world are also showing their support for the new Intel processors. Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent all confirmed that they will use these new pieces of hardware.
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