Lisa Spelman at Intel: Building a high-performance and energy-efficient future for data center users

New, high-density and ultra-power-efficient Xeon processors for cloud services

Lisa Spelman

Vice President and General Manager of Intel Xeon Processor and Storage Group

As Pat Gelsinger and Sandra Rivera shared at the 2022 Investor Conference, Intel is now embarking on a new path to further enhance our data center leadership across all workloads while providing customers with ultra-high energy-efficient computing and driving the development of the data center industry. Thanks to leading products, only Intel can provide customers with leading performance per watt and per core through a unified Xeon platform. At the same time, it is this unparalleled product portfolio and features, as well as our grassroots software ecosystem, that provide strong development momentum for most data centers in the world today.

Intel has developed a new architecture strategy for future generations of Xeon processors, a new dual-track product roadmap based on both performance cores (P-core) and energy efficiency cores (E-core) to integrate the two optimized platforms into a common, industry-defining platform. This new path will maximize the performance per watt and segmented functions of the product, thereby comprehensively improving Intel's overall competitiveness in the industry. The first generation of products under this strategy is a new Xeon processor based on energy efficiency cores (E-core) code-named Sierra Forest, which is developed in parallel with our existing next-generation Xeon processor Granite Rapids based on performance cores (P-core).

To create a high-performance and energy-efficient future for our data center customers, we have adopted the following strategies.

First, over the past two years, we have worked closely with customers to evaluate and upgrade our products from both hardware and software perspectives. Based on multiple tests and performance predictions run in different architectures, we will be able to provide leading performance on key design points of the Xeon platform.

At the same time, we have also noticed that customers have taken a variety of measures in infrastructure optimization. Some of them are optimizing for workloads that benefit from high performance per core and low latency, such as databases, AI, and HPC. Other customers are focusing on maximizing performance per watt to support an increasing number of intensive, latency-insensitive workloads that are mostly concurrent, such as front-end web services and data analysis.

In summary, it is clear why the new Xeon Energy Efficient Core processor line is important to Intel, its customers, and the industry as a whole. The Energy Efficient Cores are designed to provide high energy efficiency and high-density throughput to support cloud native deployments. Based on this, by filling multiple Energy Efficient Cores into the space that would normally be required for a single Performance Core, we can provide higher density at the socket and rack level.

Although we have introduced a new core architecture for the Xeon platform product line, we have also ensured its compatibility with the existing broad Xeon platform ecosystem. The next generation of Xeon processors will not only share the platform, software and BIOS, but in the CPU, we have also decoupled its core and non-core functions into "computing units" and "I/O units". Among them, the I/O unit is common in performance core and energy efficiency core products, which will also enable the entire I/O subsystem design to be reused.

This reduces complexity for both Intel and our customers who are building and validating systems. In addition, the interconnects used between the cores and the memory controllers are the same, and the beauty of these designs is that by simply swapping out compute units, our customers can get the benefits of the entire portfolio from a single platform product.

Sierra Forest and the upcoming Xeon energy-efficient core product roadmap are exciting innovations for Intel and the industry. Combined with other future Xeon products, Intel will greatly empower our customers through product, platform and packaging technology advantages, and jointly draw the blueprint for future cloud architectures.

This Intel platform product based on Intel 3 process technology will be launched in 2024, further helping future data centers focus more on workloads and sustainable development.

Stay tuned for more on this exciting new product line.

Lisa Spelman is Vice President and General Manager of the Xeon Processor and Storage Group at Intel Corporation.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this document regarding future plans and expectations are forward-looking statements. Statements that refer to or are based on estimates, forecasts, projections, uncertain events or assumptions, including statements regarding future products and technologies and the expected availability and benefits of such products and technologies, market opportunities and expected trends in our business or related markets, are also forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on management’s current expectations and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause results to differ materially are included in our most recent earnings press release and Intel’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.intc.com. Intel does not undertake, and expressly disclaims, any obligation to update any statements contained herein, except as required by law.