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Sapphire Rapids
Intel microprocessor, released in 2023 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sapphire Rapids is a codename for Intel's server (fourth generation Xeon Scalable) and workstation (Xeon W-2400/2500 and Xeon W-3400/3500) processors based on the Golden Cove microarchitecture and produced using Intel 7.[1][2][3][4] It features up to 60 cores and an array of accelerators, and it is the first generation of Intel server and workstation processors to use a chiplet design.
Sapphire Rapids is part of the Eagle Stream server platform.[5][6] In addition, it powers Aurora, an exascale supercomputer in the United States, at Argonne National Laboratory.[7]
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History
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Sapphire Rapids has been a long-standing Intel project along Alder Lake in development for over five years and has been subjected to many delays.[8] It was first announced by Intel at their Investor Meeting in May 2019 with the intention of Sapphire Rapids succeeding Ice Lake and Cooper Lake in 2021.[9][10] Intel again announced details on Sapphire Rapids in their August 2021 Architecture Day presentation with no mention of a launch date.[11]
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger tacitly blamed the previous Intel leadership as a reason for Sapphire Rapids' many delays.[8] One industry analyst firm claimed that Intel was having problems with yields from its Intel 7 node with yields of 50–60% on higher core-count silicon.[12] Sapphire Rapids was originally scheduled for a launch in the first half of 2022.[13] It was later scheduled for release in Q4 2022 but was again delayed to early 2023.[14] The specific announcement date of January 10, 2023 was not revealed by Intel until November 2022.[15]
The server processor lineup was released on January 10, 2023, and the workstation processor lineup was released on February 15, 2023.[16] Those processors were available for shipping on March 14 of that year.[17] Intel shipped the millionth of this generation Xeon processors in 2023.[18]
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Features
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CPU
- Up to 60 Golden Cove CPU cores per package[19]
- Up to 15 cores per tile, a 60 core Xeon Platinum 8490H uses 4 dies populated with 15 cores to have 60 cores in total
- AVX512-FP16[20]
- TSX Suspend Load Address Tracking (
TSXLDTRK)[21] - Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX)[19]
- Trust Domain Extensions (TDX), a collection of technologies to help deploy hardware-isolated virtual machines (VMs) called trust domains (TDs)[22]
- User Interrupts (UINTR), a new architectural feature allowing interrupts to be delivered to user-mode software without kernel involvement.[23][24][25]
Accelerators
- In-Field Scan (IFS), a technology that allows for testing the processor for potential hardware faults without taking it completely offline[26]
- Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA), allows for speeding up data copy and transformation between different kinds of storage[27][28]
- QuickAssist Technology (QAT), allows for improved performance of compression and encryption tasks[28]
- Dynamic Load Balancer (DLB), allows for offloading tasks of load balancing, packet prioritization and queue management[28]
- In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA), allows accelerating in-memory databases and big data analytics[28]
Not all accelerators are available in all processor models. Some accelerators are available under the Intel On Demand program, also known as Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), where a license is required to activate a given accelerator that is physically present in the processor. The license can be obtained as a one-time purchase or as a paid subscription. Activating the license requires support in the operating system. A driver with the necessary support was added in Linux kernel version 6.2.[29][28]
I/O
- PCI Express 5.0[19]
- Direct Media Interface 4.0
- 8-channel DDR5 ECC memory support up to DDR5-4800, up to 2 DIMMs per channel[30]
- On-package High Bandwidth Memory 2.0e memory as L4 cache on Xeon Max models[30][31]
- Compute Express Link 1.1[19]
Die configurations
Sapphire Rapids come in two varieties: the low-core-count variety uses a single die (MCC), and the high-core-count variety uses multiple dies on a single package (XCC).
XCC multi-die configuration
- Multi-chiplet chip with four tiles linked by 2.5D Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridges. Each tile is a 400mm2 system on a chip, providing both compute cores and I/O.[32]
- Each tile contains 15 Golden Cove cores, and a single UPI link
- Each tile's memory controller provides two channels of DDR5 ECC supporting 4 DIMMs (2 per channel) and 1 TB of memory with a maximum of 8 channels, 16 DIMMs, and 4 TB memory across 4 tiles[33]
- A tile provides up to 32 PCIe 5.0 lanes, but one of the eight PCIe controllers of a CPU is usually reserved for DMI, resulting in a maximum of 112 non-chipset lanes. This maximum is only reached in the W-3400 series processors, while the server processors have 80 (20 per tile).[34]
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List of Sapphire Rapids processors
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Sapphire Rapids-HBM (High Bandwidth Memory/Xeon Max Series)
Xeon Max processors contain 64 GB of High Bandwidth Memory.
Sapphire Rapids-SP (Scalable Performance)
With its maximum of 60 cores, Sapphire Rapids-SP competes with AMD's Epyc 8004/9004 Genoa with up to 96 cores and Bergamo with up to 128 cores. Sapphire Rapids Xeon server processors are scalable from single-socket configurations up to 8 socket configurations.[35][36]
Suffixes to denote:[37]
- +: Includes 1 of each of the four accelerators: DSA, IAA, QAT, DLB
- H: Database and analytics workloads, supports 4S (Xeon Gold) and/or 8S (Xeon Platinum) configurations and includes all of the accelerators
- M: Media transcode workloads
- N: Network/5G/Edge workloads (High TPT/Low Latency), some are uniprocessor
- P: Cloud and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) workloads
- Q: Liquid cooling
- S: Storage & Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) workloads
- T: Long-life use/High thermal case
- U: Uniprocessor (some workload-specific SKUs may also be uniprocessor)
- V: Optimized for cloud and software as a service (SaaS) workloads, some are uniprocessor
- Y: Speed Select Technology-Performance Profile (SST-PP) enabled (some workload-specific SKUs may also support SST-PP)
- Y+: Speed Select Technology-Performance Profile (SST-PP) enabled and includes 1 of each of the accelerators.
Sapphire Rapids-WS (Workstation)
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With its maximum of 60 cores, Sapphire Rapids-WS competes with AMD's Threadripper PRO 5000WX Chagall with up to 64 cores.[38] Like Intel's Core product segmentation into i3, i5, i7 and i9, Sapphire Rapids-WS is labeled Xeon w3, w5, w7 and w9.[39] Sapphire Rapids-WS was unveiled in February 2023, and was made available for OEMs in March.[40][41] CPUs with "X" suffix have its multiplier unlocked for overclocking.[42]
- No suffix letter: Locked clock multiplier
- X: Unlocked clock multiplier (adjustable with no ratio limit)
- Xeon W-2400/2500 uses a monolithic design and supports up to 64 PCI Express 5.0 lanes, while Xeon W-3400/3500 uses a chiplet design and supports up to 112 lanes. Both support 8 DMI 4.0 lanes.
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See also
References
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