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 - Per-Core Performance under Load
A metric that is actually more interesting than isolated single-thread performance, is actually per-thread performance in a fully loaded system. This actually is a measurement and benchmark figure that would greatly interest enterprises and customers which are running software or workloads that are possibly licensed on a per-core basis, or simply workloads that require a certain level of per-thread service level agreement in terms of performance.
This has been a strong-point of Intel SKUs for some time now, even when the chips wouldn’t be competitive in terms of total throughput. With the new Ice Lake SPs SKUs now more notably increasing total throughput, it’ll be interesting to see the per-thread breakdown and resulting performance:
Because the total throughput generational performance increase is larger than the core count increase of the parts, this means that per-thread and per-core performance is higher with this generation. The Xeon 8380 is posting +16.3% and +10.4% per-thread performance versus the Xeon 8280 when only using one thread per core.
Interestingly, these figures are less at +8.2 and +7.4% when using both SMT threads per core. Intel has explained such an increase through the better usage of shared microarchitectural structure usage in the new Sunny Cove cores, essentially diminishing the SMT yield by improving 1/T per core performance.
Generally, Intel is extremely competitive in this benchmark metric, and while AMD easily beats them with the frequency-optimised parts, it’s an advantage that should help Intel in the SLA-centric workloads.
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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.