Intel says new 'Sierra Forest' chip to more than double power efficiency

[Daniel Nenni]

Aug 28 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O) on Monday said a new data center chip coming out next year will handle more than double the amount of computing work that can be done for each watt of power used, part of a broader industry push to lower electricity consumption.

At a semiconductor technology conference held at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, Intel said its "Sierra Forest" chip will have 240% better performance per watt than its current generation of data center chip, the first time the company has disclosed such figures.

The data centers that power the internet and online services consume huge amounts of electricity, and technology firms are increasingly facing pressure to hold steady or reduce the amount of energy they use. That has pushed chip companies to focus on how to get more computing work done per chip.

Ampere Computing, a startup founded by ex-Intel executives, was first to market with a chip focused on handling cloud computing work efficiently. Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) have followed suit by announcing similar products, with AMD's offering hitting the market in June.

Intel, which has lost market share to AMD and Ampere in data centers, said on Monday its "Sierra Forest" chip is on track to arrive next year.

The company is for the first time splitting its data center chips into two categories: A "Granite Rapids" chip that will focus on performance but consume more power, and the more efficient "Sierra Forest" chip.

Ronak Singhal, a senior fellow at Intel, said the company's customers can consolidate older software onto a smaller number of computers inside a data center.

"I may have things that are four or five, six years old. I can get power savings by moving something that's currently on five, 10 or 15 different servers into a single" new chip, Singhal said. "That density drives their total cost of ownership. The higher the density, the fewer systems they need."

Intel says new 'Sierra Forest' chip to more than double power efficiency

Intel on Monday said a new data center chip coming out next year will handle more than double the amount of computing work that can be done for each watt of power used, part of a broader industry push to lower electricity consumption.

www.reuters.com

 

[Xebec]

That’s very impressive - but seems quite doable as a combination of switching from very large “Performance” cores to their “efficiency cores” while also going from Intel 7 to Intel 3. This will put them back in the game on the server side vs. AMD for general purpose server duty.

 

[Piefkee]

All do it, but its misleading. Of course P and E-Cores have different V/frq curves, that to point in the first place.

That’s very impressive - but seems quite doable as a combination of switching from very large “Performance” cores to their “efficiency cores” while also going from Intel 7 to Intel 3. This will put them back in the game on the server side vs. AMD for general purpose server duty.

Sierra Forest is not general purpose, its cloud native workloads.

Lets see if they are on the same level of performance. If they can get 20% IPCs on the E-Cores and have relativ high frequency, the part is still lower in performance than AMDs Bergamo (128C/256T vs 144C). But thats not the issue, the issue is as always Timing. Its comes out one year later than Bergamo (Zen4) and only a few Month before (Zen5) should come out.