Intel 3 process + energy-efficient core design, Intel releases Xeon 6700E series

On June 6, 2024, Intel unveiled its new generation of Xeon 6 series processors in Beijing, with the first product being the Xeon 6700E series (codename: Sierra Forest), which is based on Intel 3 process technology and features the all-new energy-efficient core (E-core) design. So why did Intel introduce a product line in the Xeon 6 series that only uses energy-efficient cores?

Over the past few years, the development trend of data center processors has been very clear, with different application demands leading to different design preferences. A very obvious direction is towards AI requirements. All AI applications demand very high performance and relatively high memory throughput or bandwidth because they need to process user data quickly and respond rapidly. Other traditional high-performance application scenarios, such as design, big data, gaming, etc., are also suitable for products with performance cores (P-cores), similar to AI scenarios.

In traditional cloud services, another direction is microservices. The demands in this direction are different; there is no excessive requirement for the performance of each core, but there is a high demand for the number of services. For example, in the customer service of an airline company, if there is a sudden heavy rain, there might suddenly be thousands of people calling to complain or change their tickets. If the backend needs to process with a CPU, it requires different cores to simultaneously satisfy different microservices. Therefore, what microservices require more is high density, rather than purely single-core performance.

Today, with the latest generation of Xeon 6 product line, Intel has started to differentiate the products and split them into two different core product lines to meet the demands of different markets: one is the product line with performance cores (P-cores), and the other is the product line with energy-efficient cores (E-cores). Importantly, although the cores are different, these two types of products share the same underlying platform, and even in the server, they can share the same motherboard. Users will find it relatively convenient when deploying, and if adjustments are needed, they can simply replace the CPU model.

In Intel's view, although the E-cores have more cores, this does not mean a reduction in performance. Enterprises typically do not replace their servers every year; the relative update cycle for servers is 4 to 5 years. Therefore, if an enterprise purchased the second-generation Xeon scalable processor five years ago, they need not worry that the newly released Xeon 6, which uses the new energy-efficient cores, will perform worse than the second-generation Xeon scalable processor. In areas such as media processing, network processing, and microservices, users may even see a 2 to 3 times performance improvement, achieving a better balance of performance and energy efficiency.

The Xeon 6700E series officially released in China today is the first Xeon 6 series product to use energy-efficient cores. With the same computing power, servers of the Xeon 6700E series only require one-third of the original machine room space to meet the original performance requirements. The saved space can be equipped with regular servers or AI servers, allowing for more efficient placement of computing power in a smaller space.

Additionally, Intel states that by differentiating products by core type, there has been no compromise on product quality or reliability. Different Xeon 6 products, although some have performance cores and some have energy-efficient cores, will still present the same x86 core to all software developers in the system, and the software remains completely interoperable.By the third quarter of this year, Intel will also release the Xeon 6900P series with higher performance, and the Xeon 6 series will continue to introduce more different models next year.