News Intel Talks Sapphire Rapids Respin, Granite Rapids Power-On, AWS Deal

[Admin]

Intel preps to turn on Xeon Scalable 'Granite Rapids' processor on Intel 3 fabrication node.

Intel Talks Sapphire Rapids Respin, Granite Rapids Power-On, AWS Deal : Read more

 

[watzupken]

I am not sure if it is just security issue that Intel was trying to resolve. I do feel that Intel may be trying to tame the CPU temperature and power consumption. Considering that Alder Lake has been in the market for quite some time, despite the Golden Cove delivering a good bump in performance, it is also clear that it is also power hungry for a 10nm product. Squeezing a lot more cores into the data center class CPU likely means power consumption can go up quite a bit, despite lower clockspeed.

 

[bit_user]

Intel's wording about its expanded partnership with AWS is vague at best. The company did not say what exactly it plans to co-develop with the cloud giant. However, given the fact that Intel's main prowess is chip development, we could speculate that Intel is talking about datacenter-grade x86 system-on-chips (SoCs) or multi-chiplet/multi-tile system-in-packages (SiPs)

Right. It's vague. So, be careful with the speculation.

Strategically, AWS's sticking with x86 means that the company will continue to use this architecture in the foreseeable future. Of course, AWS is a company that uses all available platforms, including AMD, Nvidia as well as Arm (e.g., Ampere Altra/Altra Max-based platforms). Still, custom Xeons, of course, indicate that AWS is very serious about tailored x86-based solutions.

Again, that's all based on your speculation that it's even x86. Amazon has been rapidly transitioning away from x86, to the point where I think it now comprises less than half of their server CPUs. I don't foresee them backpedaling on that. More likely, this means Intel will be fabbing ARM-based CPUs for Amazon!

This chart is from an article dated April 2021 and includes data only from Q1. The trend is obvious.

BTW, AWS does not use Ampere Altra CPUs, but rather their own (similar) Graviton CPUs. The Graviton 2 uses the same N1 cores as Altra, but Graviton 3 uses V1 cores and is already faster and more power-efficient than Ampere's Altra.