Intel's Debut Xeon 6 Efficiency Core: 144 Cores, 66% Boost!

On June 6, 2024, Intel® unveiled its latest innovation, the Intel® Xeon® 6 Efficiency Core Processor, under the theme "Greening Innovation, Unleashing New Productivity," in Beijing. This groundbreaking release introduces the first-ever Intel Xeon 6 (Xeon 6) processor with Efficiency Cores, codenamed Sierra Forest. It promises a dual enhancement in performance and efficiency for high-density, horizontally scalable workloads.

Teaming up with industry leaders like Kingsoft Cloud, Inspur Information, Nanjing General Electronics, and Memory Technology, Intel shared comprehensive solutions based on this processor and its real-world applications across various domains.

According to research forecasts, China's data center power consumption is expected to soar by 48% by 2025 compared to 2022, reaching a staggering 400 billion kWh. This underscores the critical need to boost data center efficiency in alignment with national sustainability goals.

The flagship product, the Xeon 6700E series, boasts up to 144 E cores (144 threads) and offers 1.4 times higher memory bandwidth, enabling more efficient data processing compared to its predecessors. It also elevates I/O bandwidth by 1.1 times, facilitating faster and more efficient data transfer.

Performance-wise, the Xeon 6 Efficiency Core processor outshines the second-generation Xeon Scalable processor in network and microservice performance by up to 2.6 times. It also delivers significant improvements in media transcoding, data services, and network performance.

Designed to optimize network and edge workloads, the Xeon 6 Efficiency Core processor demonstrates remarkable performance gains in 5G UPI and next-generation firewall applications.

Compared to the fifth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor, the Xeon 6 Efficiency Core processor achieves efficiency improvements ranging from 20% to 66% across diverse workloads.

Addressing the need for space-saving and cost-effective data center solutions, the Xeon 6 Efficiency Core processor offers substantial rack density advantages over its predecessors, with a 3:1 ratio for rack integration.

Intel's roadmap includes the upcoming launch of the Xeon 6900P series, part of the Sierra Forest lineup, alongside the Xeon 6700E series. This series offers a range of products catering to diverse performance needs, including DDR5, PCIe 5, UPI, and CXL improvements.

In summary, the Xeon 6 Efficiency Core series promises optimized efficiency and performance for high-density, scalable workloads, while the Xeon 6 Performance Core series targets compute-intensive and AI-driven applications. Both series share hardware platforms and software development stacks, offering versatility and scalability to meet diverse computing needs.