How Intel¡¯s Latest Server Chip Will Speed Up Everyday Internet Services & Future Technologies

Phones, laptops, PCs let you get online. But once there, a ¡®server¡¯ is what you connect with to get anything meaningful done. And the company that makes over 90% of online servers just upgraded their latest batch to be more powerful and energy efficient than ever before.

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The similarities between a waiter and server

Just like a waiter in a restaurant, who takes your order, passes it onto the kitchen, and returns with your meal, there¡¯s an innumerable network of machines behind-the-scenes of the Internet doing just that. Accepting your commands through connected gadgets, processing or retrieving the desired result, and ultimately letting you know about it.

These digital servers are the reason you can do anything on the Internet. From sending or receiving email, posting a Facebook message, watching a Youtube video, streaming the latest episode of Game Of Thrones on Hotstar, even looking up a website on your browser. It¡¯s all thanks to always-on Internet servers. Without them, the Internet simply wouldn¡¯t function.

This is the new Intel Xeon Scalable Processor based on Skylake

A server isn¡¯t unlike a desktop PC -- it¡¯s largely the same, actually. But it¡¯s specially made to always remain on, connect to hundreds of thousands of devices, constantly perform tasks with next to no idle time. Google¡¯s servers contain a large database of online websites and snippets of information they contain -- you connect to them via google.com to browse the Web. Similarly, Facebook¡¯s servers contains all the public and private Facebook data of every account on facebook.com -- every update, picture, meme, video and emoji you see there. There are servers that power critical infrastructure like the world¡¯s stock exchanges, financial institutions and banks, the airlines industry, global telecommunications, television and broadcast, and lots more.

Now imagine these servers, powered by Intel, not only get more efficient at their task but also a lot more powerful? Now that¡¯s a shot in the arm that the Internet deserves and needs, making sure the online services we all use and depend on become that much more faster, reliable and secure.

Intel Xeon Scalable Processor SKU - Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze

So what¡¯s special about these new Intel servers?

Xeon -- which is Intel¡¯s server brand -- servers are powered by processors that are bigger and more heavy duty than Intel¡¯s laptop or PC chips. And the new Xeon Scalable processors are at least 1.6 times than Intel¡¯s previous batch of server chips released over two years ago. The most high performing chip from the current lineup, the Platinum Xeon Scalable processor, has up to 28 cores, operates at very high frequency, with access to unfettered memory bandwidth and storage utilities. That¡¯s performance several times higher than multiple laptops, phones and desktops combined -- in just one chip!

This new line of Intel Xeon Scalable processor chips are specifically designed for servers to be used in corporate scenarios and cloud data centers. Companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, and other manufacturers take Intel¡¯s Xeon Scalable processors to build and manage online services of their customers. Services that everyone who connects online to consume. These services can¡¯t be faster if the server chips they¡¯re running on don¡¯t giddy up and improve, and that¡¯s what Intel has done with Xeon Scalable processor.

Intel also claims that its new server chip¡¯s increased performance is due to superfast connections between different components within the chip, like the processing cores and the memory storage. And all of this has been credited to Intel¡¯s new "mesh architecture" at the chip level, debuting for the first time in the Xeon Scalable processors.

Mesh (on the right) is better than Ring (on the left)

If you imagine a server chip to be a city district, made of different adjoining blocks arranged in a grid, then the mesh architecture is nothing but a whole new interconnected system of paths to reach any given block in the shortest amount of time. Earlier, in the non-mesh architecture, there would be a circular ring road to manage traffic across the different blocks, adding to congestion and less optimum thoroughfare of data. The mesh architecture, with its crisscrossing network of roads, improves efficiency and performance on the Xeon Scalable processors like nothing else before.

Also with the Xeon Scalable processor, Intel¡¯s moving beyond just a company that manufactures processors. No doubt, the microprocessor is still the foundational block of everything that Intel does, but increasingly the company¡¯s making a big push in also designing software that helps unlock the power of its processors.

As you can see, Intel works as hard on software as much as the CPU it runs on

With unique instruction sets, software and libraries, management, storage, and software development tools, Intel¡¯s trying to make available a software portfolio that should allow any customer to efficiently tap into the power inside Intel¡¯s chips to its fullest -- if they so desire. That¡¯s great news for software-driven companies like Microsoft, Ubuntu and VMWare, which deploy and manage large enterprise level cloud hosting solutions around the world.

In fact, to better deliver the power of its underlying hardware and power major Internet players, Intel¡¯s now started offering integrated hardware and software systems for the three software companies mentioned above. Intel is also coming up with reference designs for ideal server-based system configurations and is working with manufacturers like HPE, Lenovo, Huawei, Super Micro, and others, for easy implementation and delivery.

Why do these new Intel Xeon Scalable processors matter?

We know these new Intel Xeon Scalable processors are 1.6 times faster than the earlier batch. Not just in terms of pure processing but also routing data to and from the chip. And that over 90% of servers in the world have Intel chips inside them. Believe or not, but that's one big disruption! One of the biggest beneficiaries of these new faster Intel Xeon chips is the HPC or High Performance Computing industry.

HPC enables solving the world¡¯s hardest problems -- like in astrophysics to decode the origin of the universe, in life sciences it¡¯s been applied to understand medical conditions and diagnosis and personalized medicine, in climate science it¡¯s usual for advanced and precise long-term and short-term weather prediction, in the energy sector it¡¯s leading the wave of renewable energy (efficient solar cells), in the manufacturing and financial sector, it¡¯s lowering costs, advancing innovation and making lives better at the cutting edge. A faster server chip is fundamental to speeding up each of these sector¡¯s endeavours.

Networking is an essential component of Intel¡¯s Xeon Scalable processors, and the biggest networking revolution that¡¯s coming our way over the next five years is 5G cellular communications. Behind the scenes, Intel¡¯s helping in the development and deployment of beyond 1 Gbps routers with partners like Ericsson, Nokia, where they actually showcased a 1Tbps router at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. Some of the things that we¡¯ve all been hearing about -- like smart cities, connected smart homes, self-driving cars -- will be come to life through the transformative power of 5G. Through the Intel Xeon Scalable processors, delivering new technologies and realizing the full promise of 5G will happen faster than ever.

AI at Intel

Intel's Xeon Scalable processor-based servers will also advance the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Advancements in both these applications involves two time and data-intensive tasks -- training and inference. In the training phase, a machine learning system learns information and knowledge. In the next phase, which is inference, the artificial intelligence system tries to draw conclusions based on historical information and new questions. Both of these tasks are time intensive, and even fractional gains achieved in speed and efficiency can lead to massive gains in the evolution of machine learning systems and AI.

Intel's been in the server business for 20 years now, and this is their best product offering till date. Intel has already shipped over 500,000 of its new Xeon Scalable Processor chip to key partners, who're already reporting speed and efficiency gains as per Intel's claims. But with the emergence of AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm -- who're trying to make a dent into Intel's stranglehold over the server market -- this particular Xeon Scalable Processor platform becomes more interesting than ever.