the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are smallMAXIMUMPC JUN 2019 maximumpc.comquickstart
10
Server chips, Optane DIMMs, and a lot of talk of chiplets
Intel’s Enterprise
Division’s Big Day
to Google last year, but there
has been nothing to plug them
into until now. This isn’t the
storage Optane we have on
desktops; it’s non-volatile
memory on a DIMM. It’s a little
slower than conventional RAM,
with latencies of around 180–
340ns, compared to around
70ns, although this looks good
against an Optane SSD with its
five-figure number.
Optane DIMMs have a
higher capacity per slot than
normal RAM DIMMs, currently
peaking at 512GB. You still
need to fit one conventional
RAM module, which acts
as a buffer for the Optane
DIMMs. The upshot is that
you can change three 128GB
DIMMs for 768GB of mixed
memory—twice as much. You
can run this in two modes,
either using all of it as a single
block of main memory, with
the RAM module acting as acache, or use the Optane DC
PM modules separately as
very fast non-volatile storage.
The unified memory/storage
paradigm is a step closer....
A while ago, Intel bought
Altera, for its interconnect
technology, specifically FPGA,
Field-Programmable Gate
Array. It’s taken some time
to integrate, but we now have
the first fruits: chiplets. Intel
has the first FPGA chips made
entirely under its own name.
These 10nm chips can have
custom third-party chiplet
extensions fitted, and will
see use as DSPs, machine-
learning accelerators, and
other such jobs.
Intel is also developing
a hybrid processor using
Lakefield chiplets, which uses
its chip stacking technology,
Foveros, to pull various
components into one SoC. The
layered design has a base layer
with the cache and I/O; above
this sits a layer containing
a Sunny Cove processor
chiplet, along with smaller
Atom processing cores, and
the GPUs. Above this are two
layers of memory. Being small
enough for tiny devices, it has
been demonstrated fitted
into something the size of a
streaming stick, yet powerful
enough to drive a laptop. Weshould see this some time this
year, if all goes well.
It has not been a completely
quiet month for Intel’s desktop
processors either—the Core
i9-9990XE is finally available,
sort of. This is Intel’s highest-
ever numbered CPU, a
Skylake-X chip with 14 cores
running at a base clock
of 4GHz, a two-core boost of
5.1GHz, and an all-core boost
of 5.0GHz. It also has a not
inconsiderable TDP of 255W.
It is essentially a carefully
chosen factory overclocked
i9-9940X with no warranty.
Don’t start planning a rig
around this beast though—
the i9-9990XE isn’t easy to
get. It was planned to be only
available to system builders
by a sealed auction every three
months. The first of these has
been held, and Pudget Systems
in Washington admitted to
buying one for $2,300. The
company decided that the lack
of warranty, unpredictable
availability, and massive heat
made it unsuitable. German
PC specialist CaseKing has
offered a system built around
it for $14,671. It has also
offered the chip on its own, at
$3,384. Thanks, but no thanks.
Meanwhile, Intel must be
wondering exactly what is in
store at Computex this year,
where AMD is expected to
launch the Zen 2 processors,
and possibly Navi as well. –CLMANUFACTURERS LOVE events,
and last month it was the turn
of Intel’s Enterprise team to
get out of the office at the
Data-Centric Innovation Day,
and show off what’s new for
big data, which also tends to
highlight where tech is going.
The big launch was Intel’s
second generation of Scalable
Xeon chips, Cascade Lake. A
48-core design was expected,
but we got up to 56 cores. They
are still based on Skylake,
but get improved core counts,
clock speeds, and memory
support. These are the chips
to run those cloud and big data
services. AMD’s rival, Rome,
is due later this year, with up
to 64 Zen 2 cores, providing
some healthy competition.
Optane DC Persistent
memory also got its proper
launch, now supported by
the Cascade chips. The first
modules were actually shippedIt ’s memor y and it ’s s tor age: Intel’s
Optane now comes on a DIMM, too.