HPE has confirmed the existence of the top-end Intel Ice Lake-SP processor packing a total of 40 cores on a single die. The Xeon Platinum 8380 XCC (Extreme Core Count) is the top-end part of the XCC lineup, packing a total of 40 cores, with a TDP of 270W. The 3rd Gen Ice Lake Xeon family will be composed of two configurations, namely XCC (Extreme Core Count) with 16, 18, 28, 32, 36, 38, and 40 cores, and the HCC (High Core Count) which starts off with just 8 cores and tops out at 28 cores. (Lyrica)
The Platinum 8380 will be the company’s first 40 core single-die CPU, paving the way for a potential dual-die 80-core SKU to succeed Platinum 9200 which currently holds the record for being the highest-core CPU from Intel. The 9200 is essentially two Xeon Platinum (28-core) dies “glued” together and slapped with a new label. This SKU was aimed at clients looking for denser compute, and therefore found AMD’s offerings more appealing.
The Xeon Platinum 40-core CPU will feature eight memory channels (DDR4-3200) and up to 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes, still a far cry from the 128 lanes available on the Epyc Milan platform. In comparison, the Platinum came with 12 memory channels, 77MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 400W!
The 3rd Gen Epyc CPUs have a TDP of just 280W despite packing more cores (up to 64) and more PCIe lanes, and of course, costing exponentially less. Intel is planning to launch its Ice Lake-SP a few days from now, on the 23rd of March.
