Intel Launches Cooper Lake: 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable for 4P/8P Servers
by Dr. Ian Cutress on June 18, 2020 9:00 AM ESTSocket, Silicon, and SKUs
Cooper Lake Xeon Scalable ushers in a new socket, given that it is difficult to add in UPI links without adding additional pins. The new socket is known as LGA4189, for which there will be two variants: LGA4189-4 and LGA4189-5. When asked, Intel stated that Cooper Lake supports the LGA4189-5 socket, however when we asked an OEM about the difference between the sockets, we were told it comes down to the PCIe version.
LGA4189-5, for Cooper Lake, uses PCIe 3.0. LGA4189-4, which is for Ice Lake we were told, will be PCIe 4.0 Nonetheless, Intel obfuscates the difference by calling both of them ‘Socket P+’. It’s not clear if they will be interchangeable, given that technically PCIe 4.0 can work in PCIe 3.0 mode, and a PCIe 3.0 chip can work in a PCIe 4.0 board at PCIe 3.0 speeds, but it will come down to how the UPI links are distributed, and any other differences.
We've since been told that the design of the socket is meant to make sure that Ice Lake Xeon processors should not be placed in Cooper Lake systems, however Cooper Lake processors will be enabled in systems built for Ice Lake.
We’re unsure if that means that LGA4189 / Socket P+ will be a single generation socket or not. Sapphire Rapids, mean to be the next generation Xeon Scalable, is also set for 2nd gen Optane support, which could imply a DDR4 arrangement. If Sapphire Rapids supports CXL, then that’s a PCIe 5.0 technology. There’s going to be a flurry of change within Intel’s Xeon ecosystem it seems.
On the silicon side, Intel has decided to not disclose the die configurations for Cooper Lake. In previous generations of Xeon and Xeon Scalable, Intel would happily publish that it used three different die sizes at the silicon level to separate up the core count distribution. For Cooper Lake however, we were told that ‘we are not disclosing this information’.
I quipped that this is a new level of secrecy from Intel.
Given that Cooper Lake will be offered in variants from 16 to 28 cores, and is built on Intel’s 14nm class process (14+++?), we can at least conclude there is a ’28 core XCC’ variant. Usually on these things the L3 cache counts are a good indicator of something smaller is going to be part of the manufacturing regime, however each processor sticks to the 1.375 MB of L3 cache per core configuration.
This leads us onto the actual processors being launched. Intel is only launching Platinum 8300, Gold 6300, and Gold 5300 versions of Cooper Lake, given that its distribution is limited to four socket systems or greater, and to high scale OEMs only. TDPs start at 150-165 W for the 16-24 core parts, moving up to 205-250 W for the 18-28 core parts. The power increases come from a combination of slight frequency bumps, higher memory speed support, and double the UPI links.
| Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable Cooper Lake 4P/8P |
||||||||||
| AnandTech | Cores | Base Freq |
1T Turbo |
DDR4 1DPC |
DDR4 2DPC |
DDR4 TiB |
TDP W |
4P 8P |
Intel SST |
Price |
| Xeon Platinum 8300 | ||||||||||
| 8380HL | 28C | 2900 | 4300 | 3200 | 2933 | 4.5 | 250 | 8P | No | $13012 |
| 8380H | 28C | 2900 | 4300 | 3200 | 2933 | 1.125 | 250 | 8P | No | $10009 |
| 8376HL | 28C | 2600 | 4300 | 3200 | 2933 | 4.5 | 205 | 8P | No | $11722 |
| 8376H | 28C | 2600 | 4300 | 3200 | 2933 | 1.12 | 205 | 8P | No | $8719 |
| 8354H | 18C | 3100 | 4300 | 3200 | 2933 | 1.12 | 205 | 8P | No | $3500 |
| 8353H | 18C | 2500 | 3800 | 3200 | 2933 | 1.12 | 150 | 8P | No | $3003 |
| Xeon Gold 6300 | ||||||||||
| 6348H | 24C | 2300 | 4200 | - | 2933 | 1.12 | 165 | 4P | No | $2700 |
| 6328HL | 16C | 2800 | 4300 | - | 2933 | 4.5 | 165 | 4P | Yes | $4779 |
| 6328H | 16C | 2800 | 4300 | - | 2933 | 1.12 | 165 | 4P | Yes | $1776 |
| Xeon Gold 5300 | ||||||||||
| 5320H | 20C | 2400 | 4200 | - | 2933 | 1.12 | 150 | 4P | Yes | $1555 |
| 5318H | 18C | 2500 | 3800 | - | 2933 | 1.12 | 150 | 4P | No | $1273 |
| All CPUs have Hyperthreading | ||||||||||
Quite honestly, Intel's naming scheme is getting more difficult to follow. Every generation of Xeon Scalable becomes a tangled mess of feature separation.
No prices are attached to any of the Cooper Lake processors from our briefings, but Intel did publish them in its price document. We can compare the top SKUs from the previous generations, as well as against AMD's best.
| Intel Xeon 8x80 Compare | ||||
| Xeon 8180M |
Xeon 8280L |
Xeon 8380HL |
AnandTech | EPYC 7H12 |
| Skylake | Cascade | Cooper | Platform | Rome |
| 14nm | 14+ nm | 14++ nm? | Node | 7nm + 14nm |
| $13011 | $13012 | $13012 | Price | ~$8500 |
| 28 C | 28 C | 28 C | Cores | 64 C |
| 2500 MHz | 2700 MHz | 2900 MHz | Base | 2600 MHz |
| 3800 MHz | 4000 MHz | 4300 MHz | 1T Turbo | 3300 MHz |
| 6 x 2666 | 6 x 2933 | 6 x 3200 | DDR4 | 8 x 3200 |
| 1.5 TiB DDR4 | 4.5 TiB Optane | 4.5 TiB Optane | Max Mem | 4 TiB DDR4 |
| 205 W | 205 W | 250 W | TDP | 280 W |
| 1P to 8P | 1P to 8P | 1P to 8P | Sockets | 1P, 2P |
| 3 x 10.4 GT/s | 3 x 10.4 GT/s | 6 x 10.4 GT/s | UPI/IF | 64 x PCIe 4.0 |
| 3.0 x48 | 3.0 x48 | 3.0 x48 | PCIe | 4.0 x128 |
| AVX-512 F/CD/BW/DQ |
AVX-512 F/CD/BW/DQ + VNNI |
AVX-512 F/CD/BW/DQ + VNNI +BF16 |
AVX | AVX2 |
The new processor improves on base frequency by +200 MHz and turbo frequency by +300 MHz, but it does have that extra 45 W TDP.
Compared to AMD’s Rome processors, the most obvious advantages to Intel are in frequency socket support, the range of vector extensions supported, and also memory capacity if we bundle in Optane. AMD’s wins are in has core counts, price, interconnect, PCIe count, and memory bandwidth. However, the design of Intel’s Cooper Lake with BF16 support is ultimately for customers who weren’t looking at AMD for those workloads.
We should also point out that these SKUs are the only ones Intel is making public. As explained in previous presentations, more than 50% of Intel's Xeon sales are actually custom versions of these, with different frequency / L3 cache / TDP variations that the big customers are prepared to pay for. In Intel's briefing, some of the performance numbers given by its customers are based on that silicon, e.g. 'Alibaba Customized SKU'. We never tend to hear about these, unfortunately.
Platform
As hinted above, Intel is still supporting PCIe 3.0 with Cooper Lake, with 48 lanes per CPU. The topology will also reuse Intel’s C620 series chipsets, providing 20 more lanes of PCIe 3.0 as well as USB 3.0 and SATA.
Intel did not go into items such as VROC support or improvements for this generation, so we expect support for those to be similar to Cascade Lake.
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schujj07 - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
If you don't care what your CTO thinks, believes, or does for your infrastructure then you are a moron of a CEO. At that point why even have a CTO since you know best about everything. If I were to come to you and state I can save you $500K today on your upgrade all while increasing performance plus more savings on power and cooling you would be an idiot not to listen. However, since you don't want to trust you CTO you will just burn money.Deicidium369 - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Wasn't aware that I hired you as my CTO. I am not the CEO - I am the owner of the business. I hired the CEO and CTO and COO for that matter. What my CTO says matters. What a forum poster on a tech forum says does not matter.Spunjji - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
Dude, you've done this twice on the same article - waxed lyrical about "how things are", then when someone challenges you, backed out by saying it's just "how things were" or "how I decided to do things ten years ago". If you're going to make informed claims about the present then you need to be using info from the present; if you're not, then they're not really informed in any meaningful sense.Korguz - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
schujj07, Spunjji, you know damn well he wont ever do that. you call him out on any of his bs and fud, and all he does is resort to name calling, condesending remarks, and insults. his whole attitude is : how dare you call me out ? i know what i am talking about, and its fact, ( even though he rarely, if ever posts proof ) so dont argue with me !!! or runs away and hides.Deicidium369 - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
Hey little buddybored? have nothing substantive to say? thinking about me? Living rent free in that low rent run down tenement in your head.
Now do as you mother has asked - and go clean the basement.
Korguz - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
hey, has McDonalds hired you back yet ? or are you still layed off cause of covid 19 ?" have nothing substantive to say " oh like you do al the time ? your posts are pure fiction, and BS just like your life. your living rent free at your parents house, so point is ? the way you talk, and ALWAYS resort to insults, name calling and condescending remarks shows your are not what you claim to be. clean the basement ? what for ? when i would just make a brat like you do it.
Deicidium369 - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
I am not laid off - I own the businesses. Most of my employees in the largest business I own are idled at the moment - with only about 150 returning to work due to the construction sites in Texas and Florida being reopened. So, yes quite a few of my employees in that business are idled - I don't work for the businesses - I own them. Might be hard for you to understand.Parents are both dead - I am 49yo, married, 3 kids - own not only the home I am at right now typing this, but also 4 others. So not paying rent or mortgage.
I am sorry that your zero useful content posts are responded to condescendingly - but that is all they warrant. Maybe you can put up that screen shot of a post I made, and when I responded quite a few people told you you needed to stop already. Not calling anyone names, little buddy - you do need to clean the basement, you are the brat that has that job.
Have a wonderful day, I hope that tomorrow brings some accomplishment that allows you to grow as an individual and finally start making posts that are not just reactionary posts to something that I have posted.
WaltC - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
Interesting...mentioning Intel's "custom" non-SKU versions is fine, but AMD does exactly the same thing...;) Also, it sure looks as if TSMC is 5-7 years ahead of Intel fabrication at the moment. That's an amazing leap forward, imo.sing_electric - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
TSMC's definitely ahead but I'm not sure that it's by that much. It's pretty obvious that Intel repeatedly shot itself in the foot with 10nm, but from the last update I know of (March) their 7nm was still on track for 2021, which will put it at ROUGH parity with TSMC's 5nm.And past a point, arguing that a comparable process from Intel or TSMC is better than the other is kind of a fool's errand - you can't just say that just because say, EUV is used in X layers its better, or that the denser one wins: One company might decide to dial down density or increase the size of certain gates in libraries because they think it'll ultimately enable the best designs. You've also got to consider frequency scaling, yields and cost, and no one has hard numbers for those from both companies.
Deicidium369 - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
Intel has worked out the issues with Cobalt - not just minor features, but entire conductive layers - neither TSMC nor Samsung have even begun.Intel 7nm will be FULL EUV - ALL 12-15 layers will be EUV - nothing on TSMC roadmap has them doing full EUV / no DUV.
But yeah, Intel traditionally had 3 variants of each node - 1 was frequency optimized, 1 was density optimized and 1 was power optimized - wasn't uncommon to get 2 in one product.
Skylake is most definitely frequency optimized - and the most recent 14nm iteration is significantly denser than the 1st 14nm iteration.
Agree on the yields - Intel announced couple years ago that it's 2018 10nm (10nm-?) had major yield issues - which somehow follows them to 10nm and 10nm+ - but that's mostly the fanboys. Intel's issue with 10 was that instead of trying for a ~2x density, they tried and failed to skip a generation with a 2.7x. 10nm is 2X and 10nm+ is that 2.7x density increase - boneheaded mistake to be sure - and in the mean time they could not produce 14nm fast enough to meet demand.