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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JayNor - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
The SSD speed depends on the block sizes and whether the data is restored serially.The other issue is that the data may not have been stored to the SSD.
schujj07 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
I have and you are very wrong. Just SAP itself isn't an in RAM program, it is a set of different types of programs. SAP itself can run on multiple different DBs (Sybase, MSSQL, Oracle, MaxDB, DB2, or HANA) and with the exception of S4 HANA you need a separate system for your application server. Of those only HANA is a in RAM DB. Shutting down SAP doesn't take that long itself, shutting down HANA on the other hand can take a while depending on the storage subsystem you have. A 128GB RAM HANA DB can take up to 20 minutes to shutdown or restart on a 8Gb Fibre Channel SAN with 10k spinning disks. However, moving to a Software Defined Storage (SDS) array with NVMe disk and dual port 25Gb iSCSI interfaces changed that same shutdown & restart to less than 2 minutes. I have started a 1000GB HANA DB on that same SDS array in about 5 minutes. When you are restarting a physical HANA appliance the thing that takes the most time is the RAM check. I've restarted appliances with 2TB RAM and the RAM check itself can take about 10-20 minutes.Cramming more cores onto an Intel CPU is very difficult. The 28 core CPU is already near the top of the recital limit with an estimated size of 698mm2. https://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-sky... That right there means that they cannot add more cores to their monolithic die. I can guarantee you that they would if it would fit.
Deicidium369 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
Those systems are running on large multi socket systems... so the individual socket core count is not really that big of a deal. Most ERP is more IO intensive than purely compute intensive.I haven't dealt with a large SAP install - last one I was involved with was a SAP R/3 on a Sun Starfire server... and my SAP HANA is well handled by available RAM, and we don't need to worry about scheduling downtime across multiple world time zones.
1TB is not that large of an install - but larger than what I run... You have much more upto date experience than I do - i left the day to day years ago.
Spunjji - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
"Those systems are running on large multi socket systems... so the individual socket core count is not really that big of a deal."It is if it means they can run the same sized instance on cheaper systems with fewer sockets. :|
"Most ERP is more IO intensive than purely compute intensive."
Then having that computer power attached to the fastest *and* widest IO available surely counts for something? Especially if, once again, it means you can get the same IO bandwidth from fewer sockets.
You're basically saying "AMD is bad for this" with a bunch of faux-authoritative statements based on outdated or inaccurate information, and then when you're called on it, you dissemble with a bunch of reasons which imply that in reality AMD could probably be quite a good fit for some people.
eek2121 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
I wish AMD had a quad socket offering available via DIY for EPYC. I wish bot AMD and Intel would consider a dual socket offering for HEDT. I suppose the power/cooling requirements might be too high.Deicidium369 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
I was an Intel HEDT user - when the time came to replace our engineering workstations I looked into the HEDT socket 2066 offerings, and ultimately decided on going to a dual socket 3647 Xeon Scalable motherboard and CPU. More memory channels and the ability (in our case never used, due to upgrade from a small Pascal based DGX to 2 large Volta DGX-2s) a second socket. So the people who have needed the additional power have moved to Xeon already. So HEDT is largely dead - the i9900K/i10900K can handle the lower end parts of the market - and if ISV certifications are required for support (Autodesk/etc) - then the Intel/Nvidia is really the only game in town.a Dual socket AMD or Intel aren't really that power intensive - and active CPU coolers are available for both - so chilled datacenter air would not be required (most servers use a passive heat sink, due to DC air). So if your use case requires dual socket - it's not that hard to accomplish.
schujj07 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
"So HEDT is largely dead - the i9900K/i10900K can handle the lower end parts of the market - and if ISV certifications are required for support (Autodesk/etc) - then the Intel/Nvidia is really the only game in town." The HEDT all depends on what you are doing. If you are running applications that can be done with max 256GB RAM and scale above 10c/20t, then HEDT is still viable. Especially if you need maximum CPU performance. https://www.servethehome.com/amd-ryzen-threadrippe...The ISV certification claim you make is total BS. https://www.amd.com/en/support/certified-drivers (that is just Radeon Pro) For CPU that is simple since it is x86-64 and anything that runs x86-64 will work with it just fine.
Deicidium369 - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
SighThe vendor we used back then would only offer Support on end to end systems they supplied - so it was Intel and Nvidia - at this point AMD was not in a competitive position. Looking at the dates of the drivers - they were not certified at the time. We used Win 7 at that time.
I don't know what you want - sorry if my experience is different that what the AMD website has to say. I chose Intel and will continue to choose Intel. I don't care what you choose as I don't care.
Sorry that Intel has a dominant position in almost every single segment, also sorry that Nvidia has been destroying AMD in GPUs. Sorry that at the time when I purchased a system for the then new Window 7 that AMD was not an option for CPU or GPU. My businesses run off of Intel and Nvidia. When making the decisions for the now current system I evaluated TR and it came up short, WAY SHORT. I don't expect to eval TR or Epyc for the replacements early next year. Sorry that it somehow affects you.
schujj07 - Friday, June 19, 2020 - link
I don't care what you choose, just don't come in and state things as fact when your information is 10 years old. Remember that when you make false and misleading claims people will call you out. There are a lot of IT Pros who read this website for the new tech that is coming out or because they are system builders as well. We know what we are talking about because our job is to stay on top of the trends.Deicidium369 - Saturday, June 20, 2020 - link
Yeah and you work for people like me. And I don't care what you think, believe or do.