Computex:
Intel Transforms Power, Performance, and Affordability, Accelerating AI Everywhere
With its Lunar Lake architecture, Gaudi accelerators, and Intel Xeon 6 processors, Intel offers the greatest AI solutions for networking, cloud, client, and edge applications.
With increased processing power, cutting-edge power efficiency, and an affordable total cost of ownership (TCO), clients may now take use of the full potential of AI systems.
Highlights of the news:
allows for 3:1 rack consolidation, up to 4.2x improvements in rack-level performance, and up to 2.6x gains in performance per watt.
• Releases the price for the AI accelerator kits for Intel® Gaudi® 2 and Intel® Gaudi® 3, which offer excellent performance at a cost up to one-third less than that of competing platforms2. Xeon CPUs and Gaudi AI accelerators together provide a potent way to make AI more affordable, faster, and widely available.
• reveals the Lunar Lake client processor architecture in an effort to expand the market for AI PCs. With revolutionary x86 power efficiency and uncompromised application compatibility, the upcoming generation of AI PCs will have up to 40% less system-on-chip (SoC) power than its predecessors3.
According to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, “AI is driving one of the most consequential eras of innovation the industry has ever seen.” “The magic of silicon is enabling exponential computing advancements that will drive the global economy for years to come and push the boundaries of human potential.”
Gelsinger went on, “Intel is one of the few businesses in the world that is inventing across the whole gamut of the AI market opportunity, from PC, network, edge, and data center systems to semiconductor production. Our most recent Xeon, Gaudi, and Core Ultra platforms, along with the strength of our ecosystem of hardware and software, are enabling us to provide our clients with the adaptable, safe, long-lasting, and reasonably priced solutions they require to take full advantage of the enormous opportunities that lie ahead.
AI Is Enabled Across Intel
Gelsinger emphasized the advantages of open standards and Intel’s robust ecosystem in his Computex keynote address, emphasizing how these factors are driving the AI opportunity. Prominent figures and significant corporations expressed their support for him, including Satya Nadella, the chairman and CEO of Microsoft, Jason Chen, the chairman and CEO of Acer, Jonney Shih, the president of Inventec, and others.
Finally, it marked the beginning of the AI PC era by introducing Intel® CoreTM Ultra processors, which are now found in over 8 million devices, and revealed the upcoming client architecture that will be released later this year.
With these innovations, Intel is democratizing AI and sparking new sectors by increasing execution while pushing the envelope on innovation and production speed.
Updating the Data Center to Support AI: Performance and Power Efficiency for High-Density, Scale-Out Tasks are Improved by Intel Xeon 6 Processors
Companies are under increasing pressure to update their outdated data center systems in order to maximize physical floor and rack space, save costs, meet sustainability targets, and develop new digital capabilities throughout the organization as digital transformations pick up speed.
A common software stack and an open ecosystem of hardware and software providers underpin the architectures of both E-cores and P-cores.
The first of the Xeon 6 processors to debut is the Intel Xeon 6 E-core (code-named Sierra Forest), which is available beginning today.
Xeon 6 P-cores (code-named Granite Rapids) are expected to launch next quarter.
With high core density and exceptional performance per watt, Intel Xeon 6 E-core delivers efficient compute with significantly lower energy costs. The improved performance with increased power efficiency is perfect for the most demanding high-density, scale-out workloads, including cloud-native applications and content delivery networks, network microservices and consumer digital services.
Using less power and rack space, Xeon 6 processors free up compute capacity and infrastructure for innovative new AI projects.
Providing High Performance GenAI at Significantly Lower Total Cost with Intel Gaudi AI Accelerators
Today, harnessing the power of generative AI becomes faster and less expensive. As the dominant infrastructure choice, x86 operates at scale in nearly all data center environments, serving as the foundation for integrating the power of AI while ensuring cost-effective interoperability and the tremendous benefits of an open ecosystem of developers and customers.
For training and inference of large language models (LLM), the Gaudi architecture is the only MLPerf-benchmarked substitute for Nvidia H100 that offers customers the desired GenAI performance at a price-performance advantage that offers choice, quick deployment, and a lower total cost of operation.
A standard AI kit including eight Intel Gaudi 2 accelerators with a universal baseboard (UBB) offered to system providers at $65,000 is estimated to be one-third the cost of comparable competitive platforms. A kit including eight Intel Gaudi 3 accelerators with a UBB will list at $125,000, estimated to be two-thirds the cost of comparable competitive platforms4.
Intel Gaudi 3 accelerators will deliver significant performance improvements for training and inference tasks on leading GenAI models, helping enterprises unlock the value in their proprietary data. Intel Gaudi 3 in an 8,192-accelerator cluster is projected to offer up to 40% faster time-to-train5 versus the equivalent size Nvidia H100 GPU cluster and up to 15% faster training6 throughput for a 64-accelerator cluster versus Nvidia H100 on the Llama2-70B model. In addition, Intel Gaudi 3 is projected to offer an average of up to 2x faster inferencing7 versus Nvidia H100, running popular LLMs such as Llama-70B and Mistral-7B.
To make these AI systems broadly available, Intel is collaborating with at least 10 top global system providers, including six new providers who announced they’re bringing Intel Gaudi 3 to market. Today’s new collaborators include Asus, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Inventec, Quanta and Wistron, expanding the production offerings from leading system providers Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and Supermicro.
Accelerating On-Device AI for laptop PCs; New Architecture Delivers 3x AI Compute and Incredible Power-Efficiency
Beyond the data center, Intel is scaling its AI footprint at the edge and in the PC. With more than 90,000 edge deployments and 200 million CPUs delivered to the ecosystem, Intel has enabled enterprise choice for decades.
Today the AI PC category is transforming every aspect of the compute experience, and Intel is at the forefront of this category-creating moment. It’s no longer just about faster processing speeds or sleeker designs, but rather creating edge devices that learn and evolve in real time – anticipating user needs, adapting to their preferences, and heralding an entirely new era of productivity, efficiency and creativity.
AI PCs are projected to make up 80% of the PC market by 2028, according to Boston Consulting Group. In response, Intel has moved quickly to create the best hardware and software platform for the AI PC, enabling more than 100 independent software vendors (ISVs), 300 features and support of 500 AI models across its Core Ultra platform.
Quickly building on these unmatched advantages, the company today revealed the architectural details of Lunar Lake – the flagship processor for the next generation of AI PCs. With a massive leap in graphics and AI processing power, and a focus on power-efficient compute performance for the thin-and-light segment, Lunar Lake will deliver up to 40% lower SoC power3 and more than 3 times the AI compute8. It’s expected to ship in the third quarter of 2024, in time for the holiday buying season.
Lunar Lake’s all-new architecture will enable:
• New Performance-cores (P-cores) and Efficient-cores (E-cores) deliver significant performance and energy efficiency improvements.
• A fourth-generation Intel neural processing unit (NPU) with up to 48 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance. This powerful NPU delivers up to 4x AI compute over the previous generation, enabling corresponding improvements in generative AI.
• The all-new Xe2-powered GPU design combines new innovations: second-generation Xe cores with Xe Matrix Extension (XMX) for AI, enhanced ray tracing units, low-power hardware decode for the new VVC video codec technology and support for the latest eDP 1.5 panels. The Xe2 GPU cores improve gaming and graphics performance by 1.5x over the previous generation, while the new XMX arrays enable a second AI accelerator with up to 67 TOPS of performance for extraordinary throughput in AI content creation.
• Advanced low-power island, a novel compute cluster and Intel innovation that handles background and productivity tasks with extreme efficiency, enabling amazing laptop battery life.
As others prepare to enter the AI PC market, Intel is already shipping at scale, delivering more AI PC processors through 2024’s first quarter than all competitors together. Lunar Lake is set to power more than 80 different AI PC designs from 20 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Intel expects to deploy more than 40 million Core Ultra processors in market this year.
As Gordon Moore famously said, “Whatever has been done, can be outdone,” and Intel stands as the vanguard of this relentless pursuit of progress. With global scale spanning client, edge, data center and cloud, a robust ecosystem grounded in open standards, and powerful, cost-effective solutions, Intel is not just powering AI everywhere; it is shaping its future. Today’s announcements are not just a technological leap, but an invitation to customers and partners to seize unprecedented possibilities and pioneer the next era of their own innovations.
Editor’s Note: Claims regarding the Xe2 GPU were updated on June 4, 2024.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including with respect to Intel’s product roadmap and anticipated product sales and competitiveness and projected growth and trends in markets relevant to Intel’s business. Such statements involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied, including those associated with:
• the high level of competition and rapid technological change in our industry;
• the significant long-term and inherently risky investments we are making in R&D and manufacturing facilities that may not realize a favorable return;
• the complexities and uncertainties in developing and implementing new semiconductor products and manufacturing process technologies;
• our ability to time and scale our capital investments appropriately and successfully secure favorable alternative financing arrangements and government grants;
• implementing new business strategies and investing in new businesses and technologies;
• changes in demand for our products;
• macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical tensions and conflicts, including geopolitical and trade tensions between the US and China, the impacts of Russia’s war on Ukraine, tensions and conflict affecting Israel and the Middle East, and rising tensions between mainland China and Taiwan;
• the evolving market for products with AI capabilities;
• our complex global supply chain, including from disruptions, delays, trade tensions and conflicts, or shortages;
• product defects, errata and other product issues, particularly as we develop next-generation products and implement next-generation manufacturing process technologies;
• potential security vulnerabilities in our products;
• increasing and evolving cybersecurity threats and privacy risks;
• IP risks including related litigation and regulatory proceedings;
• the need to attract, retain, and motivate key talent;
• strategic transactions and investments;
• sales-related risks, including customer concentration and the use of distributors and other third parties;
• our significantly reduced return of capital in recent years;
• our debt obligations and our ability to access sources of capital;
• complex and evolving laws and regulations across many jurisdictions;
• fluctuations in currency exchange rates;
• changes in our effective tax rate;
• catastrophic events;
• environmental, health, safety, and product regulations;
• our initiatives and new legal requirements with respect to corporate responsibility matters; and
• other risks and uncertainties described in this release, our 2023 Form 10-K, and our other filings with the SEC.
Given these risks and uncertainties, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made in this release and in other documents we file from time to time with the SEC that disclose risks and uncertainties that may affect our business.
Unless specifically indicated otherwise, the forward-looking statements in this release are based on management’s expectations as of the date of this release, unless an earlier date is specified, including expectations based on third-party information and projections that management believes to be reputable. We do not undertake, and expressly disclaim any duty, to update such statements, whether as a result of new information, new developments, or otherwise, except to the extent that disclosure may be required by law.
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