[The Exiled]

Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids supports HBM and Ponte Vecchio OAM

Intel’s new Sapphire Rapids Xeon Scalable with High-Bandwidth Memory (SPR-HBM) will be coming to market. Rather than hide it away for use with one particular hyperscaler, Intel has stated to AnandTech that they are committed to making HBM-enabled Sapphire Rapids available to all enterprise customers and server vendors as well. These versions will come out after the main Sapphire Rapids launch, and entertain some interesting configurations. We understand that this means SPR-HBM will be available in a socketed configuration. Intel states that SPR-HBM can be used with standard DDR5, offering an additional tier in memory caching. The HBM can be addressed directly or left as an automatic cache we understand, which would be very similar to how Intel's Xeon Phi processors could access their high bandwidth memory. Alternatively, SPR-HBM can work without any DDR5 at all. This reduces the physical footprint of the processor, allowing for a denser design in compute-dense servers that do not rely much on memory capacity (these customers were already asking for quad-channel design optimizations anyway).

In terms of CPUs, Intel’s dominance is weakening and AMD is on the rise, as we expected. And once the exascale machines hit, AMD will have a large percentage of the GPU compute and even the CPU compute because of the hybrid architectures in use. In June 2018, Intel had 95 percent share of the CPUs used in the Top500 rankings, and in June 2019 it rose to 95.6 percent and then fell to 94.2 percent in the June 2020 list. In the November 2020 list, Intel’s CPU share of the supercomputing rankings dropped to 91.8 percent, with AMD rising to 4.2 percent, and in the June 2021 rankings Intel is down to 86.2 percent of the systems and AMD is up to 9.8 percent of systems. With all of the big pre-exascale systems and exascale systems coming down the pike based on AMD Epyc processors in their hosts, AMD’s share of machines is going to rise, but its share of CPU cores is going to explode. And the same thing is going happen with the system count and GPU count for AMD relative to Nvidia starting with the November 2021 list, when the Frontier system at Oak Ridge is expected to leap ahead of Fugaku and take the top spot.

Intel Socket LGA-1700 and LGA-1800 in detail – Exclusive data and drawings for the new CPUs starting with Alder Lake

First, let’s take a look at the new socket compared to its predecessors and consider the obvious differences. I don’t even have to explain much, because you can see it at first glance by the dimensions and the shape. In this context, the backplate is also interesting, so I picked out the relevant construction drawing of the last three LGA sockets. The first thing you might notice is the new heatspreader (IHS), which is now rectangular instead of square. This has a big influence on the optimal positioning of the heatpipes in air coolers and is especially in coolers with DHT (Direct Heat Touch), so without a real heatsink, quite an important factor for the possible performance. Because then only the ground heatpipes cool. If these are unfavorable, that’s it with the performance, because we know exactly this problem from AMD’s Ryzen CPUs and the asymmetrically placed dies.

Izvor: ServeTheHome, AnandTech, HPCwire, The Next Platform i Igor's LAB