Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake SP) Review: Generationally Big, Competitively Small
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 6, 2021 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Servers
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Enterprise
- Xeon Scalable
- Ice Lake-SP
SPEC - Single-Threaded Performance
Single-thread performance of server CPUs usually isn’t the most important metric for most scale-out workloads, but there are use-cases such as EDA tools which are pretty much single-thread performance bound.
Power envelopes here usually don’t matter, and what is actually the performance factor that comes at play here is simply the boost clocks of the CPUs as well as the IPC improvement, and memory latency of the cores.
The one hiccup for the Xeon 8380 this generation is the fact that although there’s plenty of IPC gains to be had compared to previous microarchitectures, the new SKU is only boosting up to 3.4GHz, whereas the 8280 was able to boost up to 4GHz, which is a 15% deficit.
Even with the clock frequency disadvantage, thanks to the IPC gains, much improved memory bandwidth, as well as the much larger L3 cache, the new Ice Lake part to most of the time beat the Cascade Lake part, with only a couple of compute-bound core workloads where it falls behind.
The floating-point figures are more favourable to the ICX architecture due to the stronger memory performance.
Overall, the new Xeon 8380 at least manages to post slight single-threaded performance increases this generation, with larger gains in memory-bound workloads. The 8380 is essentially on par with AMD’s 7763, and loses out to the higher frequency optimised parts.
Intel has a few SKUs which offers slightly higher ST boost clocks of up to 3.7GHz – 300Mhz / 8.8% higher than the 8380, however that part is only 8-core and features only 18MB of cache. Other SKUS offer 3.5-3.6GHz boosts, but again less cache. So while the ST figures here could improve a bit on those parts, it’s unlikely to be significant.
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lmcd - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
Linking semiaccurate like it's accurate, the jokes write themselves.arashi - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
Still more accurate than the embarrassment called #silicongang.schujj07 - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
As an actual administrator in a datacenter your statement about those advantages is bogus.Hifihedgehog - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
> AMD, as we know even from consumer products isn't that amazing when it comes to drivers, BIOS quality and fixing bugs, whereas Intel is much more reliable in this regard.What drivel even is this? Have you actually worked in the industry? Clearly, you have not. I have already seen machine learning nodes move to Epyc, my web host has since moved to Epyc, and even a lot of recommendations for home lab equipment (see ServeTheHome) has since been moving heavily towards AMD. You have no clue. So go eat a pound of sand. At least it will put out better crap than Intel’s 10nm.
amootpoint - Wednesday, April 7, 2021 - link
If your ML has moved to AMD, you are already burning a lot of money ... good luck.AI is where AMD is lagging so much compared to Intel, that it doesn’t even make sense.
schujj07 - Wednesday, April 7, 2021 - link
You obviously don't know what the term "Machine Learning Node" actually means. That doesn't mean the accelerators for machine learning are FirePro or Epyc, just the server that houses them are running Epyc.amootpoint - Thursday, April 8, 2021 - link
You clearly sounds like an arrogant guy, with full on personal attacks. No point in further discussion.schujj07 - Thursday, April 8, 2021 - link
Pot calling kettle black.duploxxx - Wednesday, April 7, 2021 - link
This is a release of server chips, which are distributed through OEM mainly with their specific drivers and BIOS releases close design with AMD.... Do you honestly believe that you get instable BIOS, drivers for Server releases? It's not a consumer moboproduct for 50-100-150$ that goes on sale for the masses with generic subset of BIOS that needs to look fancy, has oc potential, looks and feel, fan mngmnt etc....second, price, upgradeability is still in favor of the AMD product, quality and support is delivered by the same OEM that ships both intel and AMD systems... and performance, well we know that answer already.. which only leaves retared ICT members that are aging and still believe in some mythical vendors... well i hope they still like all the spectre and meltdown patches and feel evry confident in there infinit support of a dominant monopoly and like to pay 10-15k$ for a server cpu to allow a bit more Ram support.
DannyH246 - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
Oh and also don’t forget the usual Intel fused off features just because...Compare this to AMD where you get all features in all SKU’s. Anyone who recommends this crap is simply an Intel Fanboi.