Intel Rolls Out Next-Gen Data Center Portfolio; 100 Gigabit Ethernet, Optane DC, Hewitt Lake, and Cascade Lake With Up to 56 Cores

Workload-Specialized Processors

Intel has seen a large expansion of the cloud market (TAM) and along with it they have reported a significant increase in the need for custom SKUs. In fact, at last year innovation summit, the company reported that over 50% of their cloud SKUs are custom to customers, this is up from just 18% in 2013. For Intel, Custom SKUs mean models that are tailored (binned) to a customer’s exact workload needs. That can be a modification to the TDP limit in order to reach extremely low or high frequencies, modifications to the turbo or base frequencies. An example of a Skylake-based custom SKU is the Xeon Platinum 8124 which is designed specifically for Amazon AWS and has a fixed turbo frequency for any number of active cores.

With Cascade Lake, Intel is doubling down on specialized SKUs. Many SKUs that were sought after by customers are now becoming part of Intel’s standard Xeon lineup. New SKUs can be grouped into the following categories:

• Speed Select Technology SKUs
• Specialized for network function virtualization
• Specialized for networking and IoT (NEBS Friendly)
• Specialized Search Application
• Extended Memory

Speed Select Technology (SST)

Speed Select Technology is a new feature found on SST-enabled SKUs that allows for finer per-core power/performance configuration. SST-enabled SKUs come with additional controls that allow system administrators to change the turbo and base frequencies of certain cores. Those cores (called prioritized cores) can then have certain applications with higher priority affinitized to them. Since the power budget of the processor is fixed, with less prioritized cores, it’s possible to increase the base or turbo frequency. This can be furthered improved by reducing the frequencies of lower-priority cores (below their pre-defined base frequencies). In other words, SST allows for higher performance for priority workloads through the sacrifice of lower-priority workloads.

There are three new SST-enabled SKUs. Processor models with SST are suffixed with a ‘Y’.

Cascade Lake With SST
Model	Cores	Base	Turbo	L3	TDP
Platinum 8260Y	24 / 48	2.4 GHz	3.9 GHz	35.75 MiB	165 W
Gold 6240Y	18 / 36	2.6 GHz	3.9 GHz	24.75 MiB	150 W
Silver 4214Y	12 / 24	2.2 GHz	3.2 GHz	16.5 MiB	85 W

VM Density Value Specialized SKUs

VM density value optimized are SKUs that have been optimized to provide higher ROI for customers that benefit more from the higher thread count.

There are two new VM density SKUs. Those models are suffixed with a ‘V’.

Cascade Lake VM Density SKUs
Model	Cores	Base	Turbo	L3	TDP
Gold 6262V	24 / 48	1.9 GHz	3.6 GHz	33 MiB	135 W
Gold 6222V	20 / 40	1.8 GHz	3.6 GHz	27.5 MiB	115 W

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) SKUs

NFV models are optimized for dynamic density VMs with additional headroom for higher subscribe capacity. NFV SKUs also feature speed select profiles with configurable priority based on the kind of workloads that are running.

There are three new NFV SKUs. Those models are suffixed with a ‘N’.

Cascade Lake NFV SKUs
Model	Cores	Base	Turbo	L3	TDP
Gold 6252N	24 / 48	2.3 GHz	3.6 GHz	35.75 MiB	150 W
Gold 6230N	20 / 40	2.3 GHz	3.5 GHz	27.5 MiB	125 W
Gold 5218N	16 / 32	2.3 GHz	3.9 GHz	22 MiB	105 W

Search Application Value specialized

The search-optimized SKU is mainly designed for cloud search applications. Those models are designed such that they have predictable performance and latencies.

There is one new search-optimized SKUs. Those models are suffixed with an ‘S’.

Cascade Lake Search-optimized SKUs
Model	Cores	Base	Turbo	L3	TDP
Gold 5220S	18 / 36	2.7 GHz	3.9 GHz	24.75 MiB	125 W

Specialized for networking and IoT (NEBS Friendly)

Models that are suffixed with “T” have extended lifetime (10 year use) guarantees and NEBS-friendly packing specification.

There are four new NEBS-friendly SKUs.

Cascade Lake NEBS-friendly SKUs
Model	Cores	Base	Turbo	L3	TDP
Gold 6238T	22 / 44	1.9 GHz	3.7 GHz	30.25 MiB	125 W
Gold 6230T	20 / 40	2.1 GHz	3.9 GHz	27.5 MiB	125 W
Gold 5220T	18 / 36	2.2 GHz	3.9 GHz	24.75 MiB	105 W
Silver 4209T	8 / 16	2.2 GHz	3.2 GHz	11 MiB	70 W

Extended Memory

Beyond the normal supported memory, Intel also offers fourteen additional SKUs with extended memory support. Xeon Scalable models with the ‘M’ suffix offer medium DDR memory tier support with up to 2 TiB of memory per socket. Above those SKUs are ‘L’-suffixed SKUs which offer large memory support of up to 4.5 TiB of memory per socket.

Extended Memory Cascade Lake SKUs
Model	Cores	Base	Turbo	L3	TDP
Platinum 8280L	28 / 56	2.7 GHz	4.0 GHz	38.5 MiB	205 W
Platinum 8280M	28 / 56	2.7 GHz	4.0 GHz	38.5 MiB	205 W
Platinum 8276L	28 / 56	2.2 GHz	4.0 GHz	38.5 MiB	165 W
Platinum 8276M	28 / 56	2.2 GHz	4.0 GHz	38.5 MiB	165 W
Platinum 8260L	24 / 48	2.4 GHz	3.9 GHz	35.7 MiB	165 W
Platinum 8260M	24 / 48	2.4 GHz	3.9 GHz	35.7 MiB	165 W
Platinum 8253L	16 / 32	2.2 GHz	3.0 GHz	35.7 MiB	165 W
Platinum 8253M	16 / 32	2.2 GHz	3.0 GHz	35.7 MiB	165 W
Gold 6240L	18 / 36	2.6 GHz	3.9 GHz	24.75 MiB	150 W
Gold 6240M	18 / 36	2.6 GHz	3.9 GHz	24.75 MiB	150 W
Gold 6238L	22 / 44	2.1 GHz	3.7 GHz	30.25 MiB	140 W
Gold 6238M	22 / 44	2.1 GHz	3.7 GHz	30.25 MiB	140 W
Gold 5215L	10 / 20	2.5 GHz	3.4 GHz	16.5 MiB	85 W
Gold 5215M	10 / 20	2.5 GHz	3.4 GHz	16.5 MiB	85 W