Intel's New 5th Gen Xeon Scalable Set to Power AI in the Data Center

Intel has unveiled a host of new AI offerings, including an upgrade to its Xeon line of chips at the company’s AI Everywhere event.

Intel unveiled the 5^th gen Xeon Scalable processors – the fourth generation only came out in January. This latest line is designed to power AI and high-performance computing workloads.

The chips feature 64 cores, with Intel claiming the new chips have more built-in accelerators than any data center processor on the market. The CPUs reportedly offer up to 42% higher inferencing performance for large language models and can aid end-to-end AI processing without requiring additional accelerators.

Going under the code-named ‘Emerald Rapids,’ this latest line of CPUs offers a 21% average performance uplift and up to 16% better memory speeds compared to the prior generation, which is ‘Sapphire Rapids.’

Intel said the new processors are their most sustainable data center processors yet – saying their energy usage could shrink customer costs and carbon footprints.

The 5th Gen Xeon processors are pin-compatible with older models, meaning that customers who picked up the prior chips can combine those with the new CPUs.

The new chips will be made available from OEMs including Dell, HPE and Lenovo, among others, in the first quarter of 2024. Cloud service availability will be announced at a later date.

Related:Intel Targets AI With Next-Gen CPUs

“AI innovation is poised to raise the digital economy’s impact up to as much as one-third of global gross domestic product,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. “Intel is developing the technologies and solutions that empower customers to seamlessly integrate and effectively run AI in all their applications — in the cloud and, increasingly, locally at the PC and edge, where data is generated and used.”