Intel Launches 5th Gen Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" Server Processors

While with Sapphire Rapids there was much talk at the time around the new accelerators available, with Emerald Rapids the accelerators do remain available but were barely talked about during the early briefings... Much of Intel's focus is rather on the AI focus with AMX. IAA / DSA / QAT rmeain available with 5th Gen Xeon though the software support/adoption remains rather limited. Intel also didn't have anything new to add around On Demand (Software Defined Silicon) this generation.

There is improved AVX-512 and AMX support with Emerald Rapids. In particular, the turbo frequency impact from AMX / AVX-512 usage should be less than with Sapphire Rapids. In a follow-up article soon I have a comparison looking specifically at AVX-512 on/off for both Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids.

Following the limited Trust Domain Extensions with Sapphire Rapids processors, Emerald Rapids brings general availability for this functionality to help secure virtual machines and will be particularly important in the public cloud. Over the past year Intel's TDX support within the Linux kernel and related components has also matured and various bits of that mainlined. Now the upstream Intel TDX support for Linux appears to be in largely good shape compared to the point when Sapphire Rapids launched a year ago.

The SKU stack for 5th Gen Xeon Scalable isn't as bad as some prior generations. The flagship dual-socket-capable SKU is the Xeon Platinum 8592+ with 64 cores / 128 threads, 1.9GHz base clock speed, 2.9GHz all-core turbo frequency, 3.9GHz max turbo frequency, and 350 Watt turbo. The list price of the Xeon Platinum 8592+ is $11,600 USD.

While some Sapphire Rapids SKUs had as many as 4 DSA / IAA / QAT / DLB accelerators each, with the exception of a few -S and -N SKUs, there is zero or just one accelerator available of each type while Intel On Demand remains available for enabling additional accelerators if so desired. AI is a much bigger focus for the Emerald Rapids launch than all the accelerator focus during the Sapphire Rapids launch.

That's the brief overview on the new Intel 5th Gen Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" processors... Now onto some Emerald Rapids benchmarks for launch-day on Phoronix in the form of the flagship Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processor benchmarks.