Intel is officially launching its next-gen Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" P-Core only CPUs with up to 128 cores & competitive performance against AMD EPYC.
Intel Rolls Out The Big Guns With Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" CPUs, Equipped With Up To 128 P-Cores & Leadership In Both HPC & AI Performance
Intel's Xeon lineup has been struggling to keep up with AMD's EPYC portfolio for a long while. The competition has been leading in terms of both performance and efficiency, offering a stronger and higher number of cores with a strong feature set and continued dedication towards ending Intel's domination in the segment. EPYC has made huge strides and the past Intel launches have not been received very well, to say the least.
However, today, Intel is coming out guns blazing with a next-gen CPU portfolio that features brand-new core technologies, features and delivers core parity with AMD's latest and greatest. Meet the Xeon 6900P codenamed Granite Rapids.
Back in June, Intel launched its first Xeon 6 family, the 6700E codenamed Sierra Forest. These CPUs feature up to 144 cores and will receive a 288-core upgrade in early 2025 with the launch of Xeon 6900E series. With the P-Core family, Intel is starting with the bigger 6900P lineup, featuring the full-fat core configurations to tackle AMD's upcoming EPYC Turin while also delivering strong uplifts versus existing parts such as Emerald Rapids and Genoa.
Some of the main features of Xeon 6900P series include:
- Up To 6400 MT/s DDR5 Support
- Up To 8800 MT/s MRDIMM Support
- Up To 128 performance cores
- 6 UPI 2.0 links, up to 24 GT/s
- Up To 96 lanes (PCIe 5.0/CXL 2.0)
- Up To 504 MB L3 Cache
- Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) with FP16 support
Intel Xeon 6 CPU Configurations: XCC, HCC, LCC With Up To 288 E-Cores & 128 P-Cores
The Intel Xeon 6900 series are chiplet-heavy design with as many as 4 chiplets for the Xeon 6900E "Sierra Forest" E-Core CPUs and as many as five chiplets for the Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" P-Core CPUs. The Compute Die is made on the "Intel 3" process node and features the Redwood Cove P-Cores along with the IMC while the I/O die is based on the "Intel 7" process node and has a range of IO controllers and accelerator engines.
Also, while the Xeon 6700E CPUs are based on a singular die configuration, the Xeon 6700P & 6900P SKUs will come in three distinct flavors. These include an LCC die with a single compute die for up to 16 cores, the HCC die with a single yet bigger compute die with up to 48 cores and the XCC die with two compute tiles for up to 86 cores.
The XCC tile for the Xeon 6900P CPUs comes in triple compute tile configurations with up to 128 cores. The CPU itself can offer up to 144 cores but it is slightly disabled due to yields. Following is how the lineup stacks up:
- Xeon 6900P (XCC SKU) - 3 Compute Tiles + 2 IO Tiles = Up To 128 Cores
- Xeon 6700P (XCC SKU) - 2 Compute Tiles + 2 IO Tiles = Up To 86 Cores
- Xeon 6500P (HCC SKU) - 1 Compute Tiles + 2 IO Tiles = Up To 48 Cores
- Xeon 6300P (LCC SKU) - 1 Compute Tiles + 2 IO Tiles = Up To 16 Cores
- Xeon 6900E (XCC SKU) - 2 Compute Tiles + 2 IO Tiles = Up To 288 Cores
- Xeon 6700E (HCC SKU) - 1 Compute Tiles + 2 IO Tiles = Up To 144 Cores
Some of the interesting features of the modular compute die architecture have also been laid out which include:
- Monolithic Mesh enables direct access between agents within the socket
- Modularity and flexible routing allow per-die definition of rows and columns
- The last-level cache shared with all cores can be partitioned into per-die sub-numa clusters
- Fabric distributes IO traffic across multiple columns to ease congestion
- Global infrastructure is modular and hierarchical
- EmiB technology extends the high-speed fabric across all dies in the package
Intel Xeon 6 Platforms: LGA 7529 For High-End 1S/2S & LGA 4710 For Scalable 1S/8S Configs
Then higher-end Intel Xeon 6900 "Sierra Forest" and "Granite Rapids" CPUs will feature support on the LGA 7529 socket platform (Also Birch Stream) with the reference platform known as Avenue City.
This platform supports 1S/2S configurations with up to 500W TDP per CPU, 12 memory channels supporting DDR5-6400/MCR-8800 MT/s speeds, up to 96 PCIe Gen 5.0/CXL 2.0 lanes, and up to 6 UPI 2.0 links running at up to 24 GT/s speeds. Following is the maximum CPU config you get on each platform:
- Intel Xeon 6900P - LGA 7529 / 500W TDP Per CPU / 1S-2S Configs / Up To 128 Cores
- Intel Xeon 6900E - LGA 7529 / 500W TDP Per CPU / 1S-2S Configs / Up To 288 Cores
- Intel Xeon 6700P - LGA 4710 / 350W TDP Per CPU / 1S-8S Configs / Up To 86 Cores
- Intel Xeon 6700E - LGA 4710 / 330W TDP Per CPU / 1S-2S Configs / Up To 144 Cores
The Intel Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids-P" CPUs will also be the first on the market to feature support for Multiplexed Rank DIMMs or MRDIMMs. These feature up to 8800 MT/s speeds & deliver a substantial amount of uplift versus the standard DDR5-6400 configurations. You can get up to 32% improvements in performance across a range of HPC workloads and up to 33% uplifts in AI workloads. The average improvement is up to 21%.
As for platforms, Intel will be shipping Xeon 6 processors as Host CPUs in a range of solutions featuring its own Gaudi 3 accelerator and also jointly working with NVIDIA for AI systems such as the MGX and HGX lineup. The lineup will scale from up to 72 cores and down to 64 cores however, customers who require higher frequency can have the Xeon 6960P switched to 48 cores, leaving more headroom for extra clock rates.
Intel Xeon 6 CPU Performance: Tackling AMD EPYC Genoa & Next-Gen Turin
Performance and efficiency is one area where Intel has a lot of talking points and the company has a lot of benchmark numbers showcasing its Xeon 6900P against AMD's EPYC family. The blue team is claiming up to 5.5x higher AI inferencing performance and 2.1x higher HPC performance versus AMD's EPYC family. So let's talk about performance and efficiency in detail.
First up, Intel is comparing its 5th Gen Emerald Rapids CPUs against the Granite Rapids "Xeon 6900P" family. Across a range of General Compute, Data & Web Services, HPC, and AI workloads, the Xeon 6900P offers a 2.28x improvement in performance & a 60% uplift in efficiency on average. Intel also shows that at a typical 40% server utilization, the performance per watt of its Xeon 6900P can be as high as up to 90% versus the Emerald Rapids flagship.
Before shifting gears to the competition numbers, Intel states the following advantages of its Xeon 6900P lineup versus Emerald Rapids:
- 2x Cores per socket
- 1.2x higher average performance per core
- 1.6x higher average performance per watt
- 30% lower average TCO for similar perf-levels
The blue team starts the comparison against AMD's EPYC and its Granite Rapids lineup with AI numbers first. We know that Granite Rapids comes with dedicated accelerator engines that can boost AI performance by a lot and here, the company is showcasing up to 5.5x AI inference perf gains over AMD EPYC Genoa (9654) CPUs. The average performance gain in AI over EPYC is 3.65x.
Intel also fires back at Team Red by using their very own numbers showcased during Computex for 5th Gen EPYC Turin CPUs. Intel first shows the numbers used by AMD for its very own Emerald Rapids chips and points to the latest figures with proper hardware and software optimizations.
It is showcased that under the right conditions, the Emerald Rapids chips perform way better than what the competition showed during its event, and in one instance such as Chatbot (128 input/output), the Emerald Rapids chip ends up 2% faster than the upcoming Turin chip.
The Granite Rapids versus Turin numbers are a completely different story. The Xeon 6980P when compared to the 128-core EPYC Turin, yields a 34% improvement in Summarization, a 2.15x uplift in Chatbot, and an 18% uplift in Translation workloads.
There's also a comparison with 96-core Xeon 6972 "Granite Rapids" and 96-core EPYC 9654 "Genoa" CPUs. In Vector Databases, Intel offers up to a 2.71x boost using its AMX instructions while Intel SVS (Scalable Vector Search) yields a massive 7.34x gain.
Intel goes on to compare its latest Xeon 6980P against both AMD EPYC Genoa 96-core & Bergamo 128-core CPUs across a wide range of General Compute and data center-oriented workloads. The Xeon chips yield up to a 3.25x gain over AMD's EPYC family.
Intel Xeon 6900 P-Core Granite Rapids CPU SKUs
At launch, Intel is introducing five SKUs as a part of its Xeon 6900P family. These include the Xeon 6980P, 6979P, 6972P, 6952P & 6960P with 128, 120, 96, 96 & 72 cores, respectively. Let's dive into the specifications.
The flagship Intel Xeon 6980P CPU will feature the full 128 P-Cores with 256 threads. This chip is going to operate at a base clock of 2.0 GHz and a boost clock of 3.9 GHz across at peak & a single core boost clock of up to 3.2 GHz. The chip will house 504 MB of L3 cache with a rated TDP of 500 Watts and offer 12 memory channels which are the same across all SKUs.
The fastest chip in the CPU stack is also the most entry-tier SKU with 72 cores which has a base clock of 2.7 GHz, a boost clock of up to 3.9 GHz, and an all-core boost of up to 3.8 GHz. The only 400W TDP SKU is the Xeon 6952P with 96 cores and up to 480 MB of L3 cache. This chip is rated at a base clock of 2.1 GHz, a boost clock of 3.9 GHz, and an all-core boost clock of up to 3.2 GHz.
Intel Granite Rapids "Xeon 6900P" CPU SKUs:
| CPU Names | Cores / Threads | Base / Boost Clock | All-Core BOost | Memory Support | LLC | PCIe Lanes | TDP | Price (RCP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xeon 6980P | 128 / 256 | 2.0 / 3.9 GHz | 3.2 GHz | 12-Channel DDR5-6400 / MRDIMM-8800 | 504 MB | 96 | 500W | $17800 |
| Xeon 6979P | 120 / 240 | 2.1 / 3.9 GHz | 3.2 GHz | 12-Channel DDR5-6400 / MRDIMM-8800 | 504 MB | 96 | 500W | $15750 |
| Xeon 6972P | 96 / 192 | 2.4 / 3.9 GHz | 3.5 GHz | 12-Channel DDR5-6400 / MRDIMM-8800 | 480 MB | 96 | 500W | $14600 |
| Xeon 6960P | 72 / 144 | 2.7 / 3.9 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 12-Channel DDR5-6400 / MRDIMM-8800 | 432 MB | 96 | 500W | $13750 |
| Xeon 6952P | 96 / 192 | 2.1 / 3.9 GHz | 3.2 GHz | 12-Channel DDR5-6400 / MRDIMM-8800 | 480 MB | 96 | 400W | $11400 |
Overall, the Intel Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" lineup looks like a grand return for the blue team and it will be nice to see how the chips fare in real-world tests.
With the 6900P family, Intel is offering core-count parity with AMD's next-gen Turin classic CPUs and is already claiming wins in various workloads. AMD's Turin launches soon so we can expect a heated competition once again within the server space.
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