Intel has announced the Xeon 6900 P-core series, and with it comes a new SKU map that breaks down the key specifications for its latest data center CPUs, said to deliver double the performance for AI and HPC workloads versus their predecessors. Intel also announced Gaudi 3 today, a new version of the AI accelerator that is said to offer not only 20% more throughput, but also 2x price/performance versus the NVIDIA H100 for inference of LLaMa 2 70B.
Intel’s latest advances in AI infrastructure include:
- Intel Xeon 6 with P-cores
- “Designed to handle compute-intensive workloads with exceptional efficiency, Xeon 6 delivers twice the performance of its predecessor.”
- “It features increased core count, double the memory bandwidth and AI acceleration capabilities embedded in every core.”
- “This processor is engineered to meet the performance demands of AI from edge to data center and cloud environments.”
- Intel Gaudi 3 AI Accelerator
- “Specifically optimized for large-scale generative AI, Gaudi 3 boasts 64 Tensor processor cores (TPCs) and eight matrix multiplication engines (MMEs) to accelerate deep neural network computations.”
- “It includes 128 gigabytes (GB) of HBM2e memory for training and inference, and 24 200 Gigabit (Gb) Ethernet ports for scalable networking. Gaudi 3 also offers seamless compatibility with the PyTorch framework and advanced Hugging Face transformer and diffuser models.”
- “Intel recently announced a collaboration with IBM to deploy Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators as a service on IBM Cloud. Through this collaboration, Intel and IBM aim to lower the total cost of ownership to leverage and scale AI, while enhancing performance.”
Some product shots:
A breakdown of the Xeon 6900 P-core Series, including the 128-core 6980P:
A quote from Justin Hotard, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center and Artificial Intelligence Group:
Demand for AI is leading to a massive transformation in the data center, and the industry is asking for choice in hardware, software and developer tools. With our launch of Xeon 6 with P-cores and Gaudi 3 AI accelerators, Intel is enabling an open ecosystem that allows our customers to implement all of their workloads with greater performance, efficiency and security.