14 DAY TRIAL // The new “Purley” server platform that Intel is working on now apparently will take the Xeon series to a level unseen for a decade. Based on the “Skylake” microarchitecture, the new Xeon will house up to 28 cores and will come with a number of important platform-level innovations.
As such, the new increased size of the chip will inevitably require a new server infrastructure, making it bigger and more complex. However, when talking about size and complexity, words can’t really do justice to how much it will actually change. We’re talking about dual-socket (2S), quad-socket (4S) as well as octa-socket (8S) machines and will rely on Intel’s next-generation a point-to-point processor interconnect UPI (Ultra Path Interconnect) bus, which will replace the company’s current-gen QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology.
It will operate at 9.6GT/s or 10.4GT/s data-rates and will be considerably more efficient than today’s QPI since it will support multiple requests per message. Supporting six-channel memory per socket, it will dramatically increase the amount of bandwidth to each processor and will also be the first to support Intel’s OmniPath 100Gb/s fabric to connect external compute and I/O nodes.
Three versions of Skylake-based Xeons will arrive from Intel: they will be “Skylake-EP”, “Skylake-EX” and “Skylake-F”. They will all arrive with 28 cores and up to six DDR4 memory channels, supporting up to 2400MHz DIMMs per channel, meaning up to 768GB of DDR4 memory per socket, and up to 48 PCI Express 3.0 lanes as well as two or three UPI channels per socket. Added to these mind-boggling numbers, Intel plans these platforms to be highly customizable to suit all sorts of cloud-computing operators and data center clients.
Four times the performance
Looking at these new models in detail, unconfirmed information gives us specs that are for times higher than today’s chips, giving us up to 6144GB (over 6TB) per socket, or up to 24576GB of DDR4 RAM per 4S machine (four sockets), on the Intel Xeon “Skylake-EX” thanks to Apache Pass scalable memory buffer (SMB), and OmniPath fabric with 100Gb/s bandwidth a multi-chip-module (MCM) package for both “Skylake-EX” and “Skylake-F.”
Chip size requires bigger sockets, so a new socket model has been developed by Intel. Called P0, the new chips will feature more memory channels and will feature flip-chip land-grid array packaging (FC-LGA) with up to 3467 contacts. This way the new socket will be larger than today’s LGA2011-3, increasing it by 76mm x 51mm or 76mm x 56mm, comparing it with today’s Core i7 Extreme and Xeon E5/E7 chips in LGA2011 socket feature 58.5mmx51mm component size.
As numbers state until now, the new “Purley” platform will dramatically increase present-day platforms by four times, being a major industry breakthrough and will demand immediate infrastructure changes from the industry.
According to CPU World, Intel will probably release the “Skylake”-based “Purley” platform in 2017.