After unveiling new desktop and notebook CPUs to offer great efficiency and performance, Intel has shifted to AI side of things. It has announced quite a few things, including a new scalable server-grade processor, storage and memory solution as well as an AI and analytics platform.
Let¡¯s start with the processor first. Intel has updated its Xeon lineup of scalable server-grade CPUs with the third generation. These CPUs support bfloat16 -- a compact numeric format that consumes half the bits as today¡¯s FP32 format but manages to get similar model accuracy without needing any major tweaking in software. This also accelerates AI training and interference performance in CPUs.?
The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named ¡°Cooper Lake¡±) offers a massive upgrade to Intel¡¯s 4- and 8-socket processor line-up. The processor is designed for deep learning, virtual machine (VM) density, in-memory database, mission-critical applications and analytics-intensive workloads.?
The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Optane persistent memory 200 series are shipping to customers right now.?
Along with the scalable 3rd generation Xeon processor, Intel has revealed an upgrade to its Intel Optane memory with the 200 series where it offers up to 4.5TB of memory per socket to make sure heavy tasks like dense virtualisations and high-powered computing don¡¯t break a sweat.
Intel has also announced its debut in the arena of Field Programmable Gate Arrays by announcing its first AI-optimised FPGA -- Intel Stratix 10 NX -- designed to offer customisable, reconfigurable and scalable AI acceleration for compute-demanding apps like natural language processing, fraud detection etc.?
?These include integrated high-bandwidth memory (HBM), high-performance networking capabilities and new AI-optimized arithmetic blocks called AI Tensor Blocks, which contain dense arrays of lower-precision multipliers typically used for AI model arithmetic.Intel Stratix 10 NX FPGA is expected to be available in the second half of 2020.
Intel has also announced its next-generation 3D NAND SSDs -- Intel SSD D7-P5500 and P5600.?
Built on Intel¡¯s latest triple-level cell, they¡¯re designed to offer all-new low latency PCIe controller to deal with rigorous IO requirements of AI and analytics workloads while also go on sale starting today.?