5th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable CPUs support the future – from AI performance to sustainability

The launch of this next-gen processor family addresses the rising demand for general-purpose compute power that can also handle complex workloads involving artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), high-performance computing (HPC) and more – in the data center, across the network, and at the edge.

It's important to note that the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor, like its 4th generation predecessor, is equipped with a host of built-in acceleration features that provide a viable alternative to traditional GPUs. Those are costly, susceptible to supply chain issues, and consume much power at a time when organizations are focused on sustainable practices to minimize their carbon footprint.

Due to our close alliance with Intel, World Wide Technology (WWT) received early access to this latest-gen processor, which we have been evaluating in our Advanced Technology Center (ATC). Our WWT team found that 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors not only answer the challenges of demanding workflows and sustainability, they also offer a host of other benefits.

Here are five reasons you should take a closer look at the newest Intel Xeon Scalable processor as you consider ways to future-proof your IT infrastructure.

#1: Achieve significant performance gains for AI with Intel® AMX

For maximum performance and power efficiency, the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor is equipped with more built-in accelerators than any other CPU on the market today. Especially advantageous for AI workloads, one particular accelerator – Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX) – provides significant per-watt performance gains for machine learning training and inference. According to Intel's preproduction estimates for AI workloads, this accelerator delivers:

Up to 2.7x better AI performance with Intel AMX versus competing CPUs.
Up to 29% higher training and up to 42% higher inference performance compared to the previous generation.
Up to 42% higher performance for natural language processing inference.
Up to 1.4x higher real-time object detection inference performance compared to the previous generation.
Up to 29% better natural language processing training performance versus the prior generation.
Discrete acceleration performance with less hardware and complexity.

And, when using Intel® oneAPI and AI toolkits, little to no enabling is needed to support the built-in acceleration of Intel® AMX.

#2: Offload the CPU with accelerated and secure encryption from Intel® QAT

Equally critical to powerful compute performance is the need for pervasive encryption and compression to protect data in process, in motion or at rest. Built-in Intel® Quick Assist Technology (Intel® QAT) saves compute cycles, processing time, space, and cost by offloading compute-intensive workloads, freeing up CPU resources. Working in tandem with Intel® Crypto Acceleration, Intel QAT helps safeguard data while achieving these performance metrics:

Up to 85% higher NGINX performance per core versus competing CPUs
Up to 93% speedup for MS SQL Server 2022 backup compression versus competing CPUs

#3: Increase operational efficiency with Optimized Power Mode

Peak performance is not always the ideal performance, especially in an environment where resource conservation is a key sustainability goal. What's needed is a way to automatically allocate just enough power to handle given tasks – no more, no less – and to ensure that energy resources are available to all systems that require them.

That's the advantage of this processor's Optimized Power Mode (OPM). Working seamlessly in the background, OPM intelligently throttles processor performance across workloads as needed, conserving and distributing energy optimally without significantly impacting performance. Running OPM in the platform BIOS, Intel reports that users can:

Achieve up to 20 percent socket power savings, with a less than 5 percent performance impact for selected workloads.
For dual socket systems, OPM provides power savings up to 140W at less than 40 percent utilization – often a typical utilization for servers, on selected workloads.

#4: Achieve increased per-watt performance while building on industry standards

The 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor represents the next evolutionary improvement in data center computing, and it does so without "re-inventing the wheel." That is, the new processor fully supports industry standards while enhancing their capabilities, effectively future-proofing your existing data center. Examples include:

Up to 16% memory bandwidth improvement and 2.7X increased last level cache over the previous processor generation, helping to deliver greater per-watt performance for critical workloads. And, the new offer utilizes memory more efficiently through support for dense memory DIMMs.
Continuing to build on the CXL framework, Intel's latest-gen CPU underscores the company's ongoing commitment to Compute Express Link (CXL), the open, cache-coherent interconnect framework that increases server memory capacity and bandwidth while dramatically reducing latencies. In addition to support for CXL types 1 and 2, it also features 80 lanes of PCIe Gen 5 and up to 25 percent higher UPI speeds over the previous generation.

#5: Simplified deployment to maximize ROI and minimize TCO

The 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor was designed for out-of-the-box compatibility with existing IT infrastructures, eliminating the need for costly, time-consuming footprint upgrades. This ease of deployment gets you up and running sooner to start realizing a significant return on investment.

By simplifying deployment to optimize ROI and TCO, the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor offers the best of both worlds: an easy path to the speed, security and per-watt performance of today's newest processing technology while conserving power and cooling resources to advance sustainability goals. To illustrate what we mean, calculate the potential cost-saving impact of reducing energy consumption by just 4 percent across hundreds of server racks. The savings from even that amount can add up fast.

Explore how you can future-proof your existing data center in the ATC

With the growth of AI and other demanding workloads, customers are challenged today with sourcing infrastructure to handle those workloads. The launch of the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor arrives at an opportune time, giving the organizations that do their homework a viable alternative GPUs as they investigate new data center options.

WWT can help you along that journey, identifying your challenges, cataloging datasets and workflows, and getting the most from your whole stack to support your mission – all while shrinking your carbon footprint. You're invited visit our multi-campus ATC facility for research, testing, validation and more, where the 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor is now available for evaluation in advance of its Q1 2024 OEM availability.

Contact us to explore how a general-purpose processor with built-in acceleration can quickly deliver success in training and inference, maximizing the possibilities while future-proofing your existing operation.