News Intel 144-core Sierra Forest CPU benchmark shows strong performance, but still falls behind AMD's Bergamo

[Admin]

A dual-socket, 288-core Sierra Forest server seems to have good multi-core performance, but it's behind AMD's Bergamo.

Intel 144-core Sierra Forest CPU benchmark shows strong performance, but still falls behind AMD's Bergamo : Read more

 

[zecoeco]

288 E-Cores as powerful as 112 P-Cores.
That's very disappointing and it shows how a single E-Core has way less than 50% of the performance of a single P-Core.

 

[usertests]

Am I reading this right? 288 cores (144-core x2) of Sierra Forest are getting curbstomped by 128 cores of Bergamo?

By the time the 288-core Sierra Forest appears, it might have to contend with 192 cores of Zen 5C. But it will already be slower than 128-core Bergamo unless dual-socket is used.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

Am I reading this right? 288 cores (144-core x2) of Sierra Forest are getting curbstomped by 128 cores of Bergamo?

Yeah, actually espcially in multi-core score.

Bergamo seems to have a major lead with 256 threads versus Sierra Forest, and considering that E-Cores don't offer multi-threading and are lacking the same performance as the P-Core offerings, AMD seems to be competitive with its current and future Zen 'compute-density' offerings.

It appears Intel will have higher cores but since the architecture is different, AMD seems to be more competitive, since the Bergamo/Zen 4C lineup shares the same ISA as the Genoa CPUs, albeit with more compute and efficiency.

 

[Order 66]

Wow, a pathetic 4% multicore performance increase going from 112 cores to 288. I understand that these are efficiency cores that are lower power and lower clock speed than the performance cores, but still, it is more than double the cores.

 

[endocine]

these things better have industry leading power efficiency to justify the low performance

 

[DavidC1]

You guys do realize that it hasn't been long since Intel announced Intel 3 was manufacturing-ready? These are extremely early Sierra Forest samples.

The final variant will be very competitive with what's out there, yes even Turin Dense(successor to Bergamo).

 

[bit_user]

... compared to Sierra Forest's 144 Glen E-cores, ...

They're called "Sierra Glen".

It's also possible that Sierra Forest will come with unique instructions or other features that Geekbench can't really account for

It could have new accelerators (or versions of existing ones) that aren't being used, but software like Geekbench would never use those anyway.

As for new instructions, we already know what it has. Intel telegraphs this stuff long in advance, so that software developers can be prepared in advance of each new hardware launch.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718933516535070950

View: https://twitter.com/InstLatX64/status/1718933516535070950

​

It's all pretty small tweaks, and mostly OS-level or aimed at tuning AI, I think.

 

[bit_user]

That's very disappointing and it shows how a single E-Core has way less than 50% of the performance of a single P-Core.

That's not what we saw when Alder Lake launched. Its E-cores were about 60% of a single P-core, and actually faster than a thread sharing a P-core with another (via hyperthreading).

Since these E-cores are a whole generation newer, I'd expect this isn't the final word on their performance.

 

[rtoaht]

You guys do realize that it hasn't been long since Intel announced Intel 3 was manufacturing-ready? These are extremely early Sierra Forest samples.

The final variant will be very competitive with what's out there, yes even Turin Dense(successor to Bergamo).

Exactly.

Everyone pretending it to be the final version with healthy Intel 3 process. Even Meteor Lake on Intel 4 isn't released yet. How can everyone expect full performance for Sierra Forrest on Intel 3? If anything, it just shows that very early Intel 3 Silicon is progressing well. This means both Sierra Forrest and Granite Rapids are on track. "5 nodes in 4-years" plan is on track.

 

[DavidC1]

Since these E-cores are a whole generation newer, I'd expect this isn't the final word on their performance.

Sierra Glen is pretty much identical to Gracemont performance-wise. The client sister Crestmont gets 4-6% gain due to 6-wide rename/allocate and improved branch predictor. It's opposite for the P cores, where the client version only gets doubled L1i cache and server version gets improved branch prediction, lower FP latencies and better memory ILP.

A leaker said Sierra Glen forgoes those improvements to get higher clocks.

Hot Chips 2023: Intel Details More on Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest Xeons

www.anandtech.com

Intel Unveils Meteor Lake Architecture: Intel 4 Heralds the Disaggregated Future of Mobile CPUs

www.anandtech.com

 

[bit_user]

Sierra Glen is pretty much identical to Gracemont performance-wise. The client sister Crestmont gets 4-6% gain due to 6-wide rename/allocate.

Thanks, again!

It's opposite for the P cores, where the client version only gets doubled L1i cache and server version gets improved branch prediction, lower FP latencies and better memory ILP.

Which P-cores, now? The GeekBench leak was referencing Sapphire Rapids, but I suppose you're talking about Emerald Rapids?

 

[DavidC1]

Thanks, again!


Which P-cores, now? The GeekBench leak was referencing Sapphire Rapids, but I suppose you're talking about Emerald Rapids?

There are no references to core gains for Emerald Rapids and Raptor Cove itself doesn't bring real gains either so. Redwood Cove in GNR does bring core changes, however minute.

Gelsinger specifically said for Granite Rapids, move to Intel 3 allowed the core to be a little bit better than the Intel 4 version. He said 10%-plus but that's quite a high number actually, perhaps an up-to number or accelerator workloads. So some improvement must exist.

 

[whj_dark]

I don't believe GeekBench6. N100 with 4 e-cores gets 1.2K in ST and ~3k in MT, it's nonsense for 288 e-cores to have such a score.

 

[hotaru251]

For all we know, it could be massively underperforming on the multi-core score, and maybe also the single-core score too.

even IF it was...it would have to double to reach amd's (and how often has that been a thing?)
I really want Intel to do better (as they have the $ & talent) as they have been disappointing later outside of the core series...hedt & server are just so far behind that unless soemthing happens they will always trail AMD (and thats not good for competitive benefits to customer)

 

[Amdlova]

I will put in simple words E-cores is a nightmare. But I think you can make work with time and lots of money.

 

[bit_user]

I really want Intel to do better (as they have the $ & talent) as they have been disappointing later outside of the core series...hedt & server are just so far behind that unless soemthing happens they will always trail AMD (and thats not good for competitive benefits to customer)

Intel has been competing at a node disadvantage. The only time that wasn't true (i.e. Alder Lake vs. Zen 3), they pulled ahead.

So, I wouldn't say they're in real trouble unless Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids truly can't compete with Genoa and Bergamo. We know that leaked data is from engineering samples, so you really can't take it seriously.

 

[JayNor]

Sierra Forest shares the platform with Granite Rapids, so it should similarly support 12 memory channels and 8800MT/s MCR DIMMs.

What memory configuration was used for this benchmark result?