To lean on something means to rely on it, and with that understood it is fair to say companies are leaning on big data more and more by the day. All of this was foreseen with the way digital connectivity was revolutionizing business 20+ years ago, but here we are now with data centre capacity being more of an issue than ever before. The demand for chips that can meet to those capacity needs has been negatively impacted by the worldwide chip shortage going on right now, and that’s a reflection of just how much of private, public, and municipal life has gone digital.
This is something that any web hosting in Canada provider can relate to, as most will be like us at 4GoodHosting in that we’ve invested in data centre expansions so that we have them in different major regions of the country, and BC and Ontario when it comes to us. It’s an essential part of us being able to offer the uptime guarantees we do with our Canadian web hosting packages. It’s elementary that we have an understanding of the data and collocation centres, and as such recent news of Intel’s new Xeon roadmap is definitely something given what the chipmaker giant is aiming for.
Intel has revealed ambitious plans to establish a degree of dominance in the data centre chip landscape in the immediate future. They have recently revealed their multiyear Xeon roadmap for the next few years, including the heralded Sapphire Rapids, with a ground breaking new chip built on Intel's 7 process which is estimated to boost AI performance by a massive 30x.
Better serving tech always sound really good around here, so let’s spend this week’s entry looking at the new Intel data center chip and all that it may offer to improve user experiences.
Rapid Expansions
This new chip is going to be an introductory offering that will be followed by Emerald Rapids. The follow-up Emerald chip is also built on Intel 7 and should arrive in 2023, and then again with Sierra Forest built on Intel 3 set to come out in 2024. We’re also seeing Intel planning to move its Granite Rapids offering from Intel 4 to Intel 3 on the same timeframe.
The various Rapids versions are aimed directly at the top of the CPU market, and the most immediate appeal of them is with performance leaps across AI and ML workloads. The way people have taken to he Cloud is a factor here, as Sapphire Rapids is especially focused on data centres and that works in line with one of the most relevant topics in computing these days.
Intel is stating that it offers better performance across a multitude of workloads useful to data centres and the processor class is set to ship next month. Any timeframe for the others is yet to be determined, and of course that is based on just how long next-generation technology takes in regard to proper development
The reality is though that the competition is nearly keeping pace and the company has challengers, and especially Amazon as they have recently begun exploring the development of their own silicon for data centres.
Focus on Developer Ecosystems
The Xeon roadmap is expected to be industry leading, and industry experts do laud it as having a product portfolio that’s developed according to user realities for the majority of Intel customers and based on their diverse needs, as well as aligned to their timelines and designed to be conducive to developer ecosystems and real innovation within them.
The chip will be the first Intel server processor to use extreme ultraviolet lithography, the deployment of which is a key technology if Intel is to catch up with TSMC and other top chip manufacturers. Intel officials said on Thursday that by 2025 the company plans to reach 10% annual sales growth but with moderate revenue growth this year plus entering an investment phase at this time where they expect at least $1 billion in negative free cash flow in 2022 occurring alongside capital spending increases.
