Intel Xeon 600 officially. This is the answer to AMD Threadripper 9000
The Intel Xeon 600 family is to be based on the Intel Redwood Cove architecture and Intel 3 lithography (3 nm class). 11 different models will be released on the market, 5 of which will be released in box form. There is still no specific release date, but new Intel W890 motherboards with the LGA 4710-2 socket and ready-made workstations from OEMs are expected to appear at the end of March.
Intel promises up to 61% higher multi-threaded performance
Unlocked X-series models allow overclocking, support eight-channel DDR5-6400 memory, offer 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes, support for CXL 2.0 and Intel AMX accelerators in each core. Another new feature is support for up to 4 TB RAM, which is twice as much as the capabilities of the Threadripper Pro 9000 WX and four times the capabilities of the base Threadripper 9000 series. In practice, however, this is an option mainly for very specific applications.
For the first time, workstations also include support for Multiplexed Rank DIMM. The solution known from servers allows you to achieve transfers up to 8000 MT/s. MRDIMMs use the same socket as RDIMMs, but Intel limits their support to only the five most powerful models. We are talking about a technology aimed mainly at HPC environments, where maximum memory bandwidth is important.
According to Blue’s declaration, the new Xeons offer up to 9% higher single-threaded performance and up to 61% better multi-threaded performance compared to the refreshed Sapphire Rapids-WS. The significantly larger number of cores (only P-type units) plays a key role here. The flagship Intel Xeon 698X has as many as 86 cores and 192 threads clocked at up to 4.8 GHz.
Intel is also happy to share test results. In SPEC Workstation 4, the flagship Xeon 698X will offer, among others: 17% performance increase in AI tasks, 61% in financial services or 19% in life sciences compared to Xeon w9-3595X. In Blender, the Junkshop scene renders up to 74% faster, and video upscaling in Topaz Labs Video Upscaler speeds up by 29%, which Intel attributes to AMX accelerators and FP16 support.
As you can easily guess, the suggested prices are not the lowest – this is not equipment for Kowalski. The cheapest CPU will cost $499, while the most expensive one will cost $7,699. All systems will be available in tray versions for integrators, while retail sales will include a maximum of the Xeon 696X model with 64 cores. So just like AMD.
