Intel is seemingly adding early support for AVX 10.2 "512-bit" for its future Xeon "Diamond Rapids" & Core "Nova Lake" CPUs.
Future Intel Core Desktop "Nova Lake" & Xeon Server "Diamond Rapids" CPUs To Enable AVX 10.2 "512-bit" Support, Xe3 GPUs See Improved Performance.
In the latest oneDNN patch v3.9-rc release, Intel has made a huge list of improvements and additions for its processor and graphics families. Some of these families are yet to be released, but the company is working around the clock to have initial support ready. The latest patch reveals some interesting bits of what we can expect from these future lineups.
AVX-512 enables wider 512-bit vector operations, enabling higher performance and capabilities in certain apps & workloads. This technology was last enabled on Intel's Rocket Lake CPUs, which were removed from the generation prior (10th Gen Comet Lake) and also the succeeding generation (12th Gen Alder Lake & future CPUs). The move was made because the newer CPUs featured two different core architectures, a P-Core and an E-Core. The P-Core supported AVX-512 instructions, but the E-Core didn't.
However, it wasn't only that. Certain motherboard makers started offering BIOS support to enable AVX-512 even on these hybrid CPUs, but this move was ultimately blocked by Intel. It was stated that AVX-512 was blocked from mainstream consumer offerings as it affected the sales of Xeon SKUs with AVX-512, and there was another issue. Intel's Rocket Lake CPUs and any generation that supported AVX-512 capabilities ran very hot and consumed lots of power, hurting their efficiency figures. So there were multiple reasons why AVX-512 was removed or blocked altogether. There are still remnants of older Alder Lake CPUs with unfused AVX-512 hardware.
After some time, around Raptor Lake's launch, rumors started to emerge that Intel was going to bring back AVX-512 support in future CPUs. The newer AVX10 ISA, especially the AVX 10.2 ISA, was seen as the focal point of when that might happen, and it looks like that much is true since early support indicates that AVX-512 is coming back to Intel's CPUs.
The new patch not only reveals support for AVX 10.2's 512-bit instructions on future Core "Desktop" CPUs but also on future Xeon "Server" CPUs too. No explicit name is mentioned as to which CPU family these might be, but if we were to guess, the Core family would be Nova Lake, and the Xeon family would be Diamond Rapids.
The Intel Nova Lake CPU lineup is still using a hybrid core architecture with Coyote Cove P-Cores and Arctic Wolf E-Cores, but with AVX 10.2 ISA support, it is pretty much expected to see AVX-512 capabilities. Coral Rapids will be the first Xeon family to bring back SMT support. So AVX-512 and SMT are back on the table instead of going the Non-SMT route like Diamond Rapids.
Another new addition in the patch is the mention of Xe3 graphics architecture. It is stated that the new patch offers improved performance on Intel GPUs based on the Xe3 architecture. We know that Panther Lake CPUs will be using Xe3 as an iGPU, and there's also a lot of faith that we will see "Celestial" in some form or shape as discrete offerings.
Bringing back AVX-512 support, along with SMT, will be a huge deal for Intel, as AMD is not only offering both on their consumer/server level chips, but doing so in such an efficient way that everyone has lots of positive things to say about them. Meanwhile, Intel has been lagging, but in the coming years, we can see Intel return to form if it manages to reinstate faith in its consumers with stronger product families and support.
News Sources: @InstLatX64, Videocardz
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