Intel Launches The Xeon D 2100, Up To 18 Core SoCs

[wizard69]

One of the first things to come to mind is that these are pretty psthetic chips based on the wattage disapated. Especially for something launching new.

Interestingly just today i hear that a high level excutive that left Intel in 2016 is at the head of a new ARM server startup. Looks like people at Intel are seeing the writing on the wall. If one wanted to stay X86 , one of AMDs APU chips would likely be a better deal than these chips.

Under 100W TDP? Too much for me.

I do like having 16W TDP for a server as a router and 35W TDP for a file/media server and another 16W TDP server for NVR (video surveillance). If I am going to have fans in my server, I would like it to be inaudible, although I'd rather prefer if a server with a 16W TDP could be fanless.

I'd like to have 3 servers in a 1.5U chassis with a very short depth, but sadly, it's out of stock in Newegg.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16811128067

[nomadewolf]

I have a question. Why are "enthusiast" consumer processors (like the 7980XE) clocked higher than high-core-count server/workstation processors?

When a chip is made, if it has two cores, Intel can only set it at a speed that both cores can handle, since there are 'defects' in the silicon and not all chips or even cores are the same.
The more cores you have the lower the common denominator gets.
This is why AMD's Infinity fabric is so disruptive, since it allows AMD to only need to find the lowest common denominator between every 4 cores and it's easy to match chips together according to their binning.

While with a monolithic chip design (like Intel) the higher the cores, the lower the clock speeds...

[starshipeleven]

It means the chipset - what used to be north and south bridges to mem and vid - are integrated. Plus GPU it would seem. I guess that constitutes a “system” in this context.

SoC = System on a Chip.

In general, when you find all controllers inside the same chip it's a SoC. RAM and storage are nearly always kept separate (either on another chip or in a standardized module like DDR or some kind of SSD) because in 99% of the cases they depend from the application the SoC will be used in.

My Rasperry Pi SoC has a separate memory chip and no flash tho.

It's also true here, Xeon D does not have its own flash and RAM either.

[starshipeleven]

Then every Intel on the market would be SoC (due to PCI-E, memory controller, GPU).

Not completely. As long as there is a chipset it's not a SoC.

Laptop parts are usually SoC now, there is no more chipset and it's all in the same chip.

Desktop parts usually still have the chipset and dump there the crap controllers like USB 3.0, Sata, the connections for the audio subsystem, the connections for the ethernet controllers, various embedded device controllers (i2c, fan controller stuff, and whatever else) and some slower PCIe lanes.

Or if we consider SoC as that Minix-powered MME...

Technically speaking, yes, the chipset with ME is a SoC, as it can operate independently with its own processor and has its own controllers and connectivity.

AMD's PSP is in the CPU, so their chipsets are not SoCs.

[wizard69]

Along with the other reasons others have mentioned, keep in mind a lot of servers tend to run many simple tasks simultaneously, whereas a lot of consumer applications demand a lot of constant and heavy attention. This is why many-core ARM servers got popular - depending on your workload, it's much cheaper and more efficient to run as many independent processes as possible, rather than run them as quickly as possible in a queue.

This is so true for many server duties. But modern operating systems are also well supported by multiple cores. It might be hard for the younger members to understand just how bad it was to run a modern operating system on a single core machine. The first dual chip machines (two cores) had a huge impact on OS usability be that OS is Windows, Linux or MacOS. Core literally where a turning point for anybody using an OS beyong the trivial.

On a slight side note, with the way things are going, many-core CPUs are much better at multitasking, whereas GPUs are better for parallelization.

Somewhat true though it depends upon specifics of the application, hardware and OS support.

What i find interesting and hopefully will be something we see in consumer machines, is the consortium that Fujitsu and others have formed to come up with a vastly improved vector environment for ARM. If the tech ever comes to pass in ARM hardware that is easily accessible it could drastically change the balance between GPU and CPU where vector processing matters.

The other reality is that specisl function units regurally beat high clock rate conventional CPUs. The perfect example here is the new so called AI ptocessors in some of the new cell phone chips out there. Such processors offer significant performance advantages and avoid the need for high click rate CPUs to do the same thing.

[starshipeleven]

Silly question: What does "SoC" mean in this context? In the normal embedded world when I see a SoC (system on chip) it generally includes both volatile (i.e. RAM) and non-volatile (e.g. flash) storage as well as a bunch of peripherals needed to do something useful. What does this chip include that makes it a SoC instead of just a CPU?

In the embedded world there isn't a SINGLE SoC I know that embeds RAM and flash storage (beyond some internal caches perhaps).

You are confusing that with SoM (system on module) which is a small motherboard where someone has soldered a SoC, RAM and flash storage already.

The main reason it makes 0 sense to make a SoC with integrated RAM is because it's very space-consuming and this makes it not worth the effort. One customer (company) might just need 32MB of RAM and another might push it to the limit and go to 3GB, same with storage.

The Xeon D are SoCs as they have all controllers in the same chip as the CPU. So it's a "system on a chip". Same as most laptop parts from both Intel and AMD of the last 2-3 years at least.


EDIT: maybe you were thinking of microcontrollers like Atmel AVRs or ARM M3, there yeah, it's all in a single chip, also RAM and flash. That's only one of the branches of embedded. Anything running an OS (usually Linux) has RAM and flash separate.

[starshipeleven]

This is so true for many server duties. But modern operating systems are also well supported by multiple cores.

The OS does not matter much here. It's the application running in it that must be able to use more than one thread (and core) effectively.

For servers it's relatively easy, as in most cases it's just a "create a clone of parent process to deal with request xyz, then terminate it when it's done", while for consumer devices it's a more complex matter as it's a single program that must split its internal functions on more than a single thread, and the programmers need to use their brain to program stuff well.

I still remember games like X3 Reunion (and Terran Conflict, same engine) that had a singlethread engine and they never got it to even use properly a dualcore.

[wizard69]

Then every Intel on the market would be SoC (due to PCI-E, memory controller, GPU).
Or if we consider SoC as that Minix-powered MME...

Generally a System On Chip is everything excluding RAM and secondary storage. The vast majority of SoC that have RAM included do so as multi chip modules of one sort or another. Note that multi chip modules dont always use SoC in their implementation.

By the way i dont think we are far away from seeing multi chip modules implementing all of the system RAM within the module. That is a APU style SoC wired directly to 8 or 16 GB of RAM (HBM) in a multi chip module. This wouldnt be much different than some of todays GPUs.

[wizard69]

The OS does not matter much here. It's the application running in it that must be able to use more than one thread (and core) effecti5L<!EBSP|=dyvely.

You completely missed the point of my post! The operating systen is of a huge importance because that has allowed multitasking. Multitasking lead to overloading the single core CPUs of the day.

If you are only concerned with running a single application then a modern operating system isnt of any value at all to you.

No consider a modern highly threaded app like Eclipse that most certainly benefits from more cores over a high click rate. The OS wotks in conjunction with Java too spread the processes and threads over many cores to give the user good performance.

In a nut shell the operating system is extremely important in leveraging those cores and conversely the cores enable modern OS features.

For servers it's relatively easy, as in most cases it's just a "create a clone of parent process to deal with request xyz, then terminate it when it's done", while for consumer devices it's a more complex matter as it's a single program that must split its internal functions on more than a single thread, and the programmers need to use their brain to program stuff well.

Again you are hung up on the idea that consummers use a singke program and that is it. On the other hand reality is far different. Even a person surfing the net in a browser may have other apps running these days, a streamming app perhaps, most likely an E-mail app and whatever else. The days of DOS are far behind us!!!

Consider another product, Apples i Pad, which many consider a single app machine. Again the OS is key here in exploiting the supplied processors, suppling the developer with several ways to leverage the CPUs. But there are more things going on in an IPad than just the users app. This is still a multitasking machine even if Apple significantly limits that multitasking. So yeah the OS matters.

I still remember games like X3 Reunion (and Terran Conflict, same engine) that had a singlethread engine and they never got it to even use properly a dualcore.

the way many people run games they would be just as well off with a modern version of DOS. This however has nothing to do with the way most users use their machines these days. A failed attempt at paralleling an app means nothing in the context of todays user where multiple apps in use and highly threaded apps exist. Even a modern web browser beñefits highly from cores with the corresponding OS suppport.

Frankly i dont get your post at all, it is like your hung up on metrics of the past that dont really mean much these days.

[schmidtbag]

In the embedded world there isn't a SINGLE SoC I know that embeds RAM and flash storage (beyond some internal caches perhaps).

Though I personally don't know of any SoCs that include both RAM and storage (not even EEPROM or CMOS), I'm pretty sure there are a handful of ARM SoCs that have embedded RAM, such as some OMAP and Exynos products. For example, take a look at the ODRIOD-XU4. This platform has 2GB of RAM, but there aren't any chips on the board. There are other products by Hardkernel (like the ODROID-C2) which do explicitly point out their RAM chips, so it's not like the manufacturer was being negligent or lazy.