Intel has unveiled the details of its next-generation Xeon CPU family codenamed Ice Lake-SP at HotChips 32. Coming later this year, Ice Lake-SP CPUs are going to host a range of new features such as a brand new chip architecture, improved I/O, and an enhanced software stack powering Intel's first 10nm server lineup.

Intel Ice Lake-SP 'Next-Gen Xeon' CPUs Detailed - Feature 10nm+ Sunny Cove Cores & Advanced Capabilities

The Intel Ice Lake-SP is officially launching later this year on the Whitley platform. The platform will scale to single and dual-socket servers. In its presentation, Intel unveiled a 28 core Ice Lake-SP CPU as an example to demonstrate the enhanced capabilities that Ice Lake-SP offers over Cascade Lake-SP.

Intel has not confirmed if the 28 core CPU they showcased is the highest core count that will be available with the Ice Lake-SP family or if there would be higher core count variants. Earlier rumors do point to higher core counts so this 28 core die could just be used for comparison with the top of the stack 2nd Gen Xeon CPUs available today.

Intel Ice Lake-SP 'Next-Gen CPU' CPU Architecture

Coming to the details, Intel mentions that its Ice Lake-SP CPUs are fabricated on the 10nm+ process and not the 10nm++ process which is utilized by the Tiger Lake CPUs which launch next month. The Ice Lake-SP family will make use of the Sunny Cove cores which deliver up to 18% IPC increase over the Skylake architecture which all 14nm Xeon CPUs utilize.

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Intel's 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable Family, Codenamed Ice Lake-SP, presentation at HotChip 32 (Image Credits: HardwareLuxx)

The Sunny Cove architecture, in general, adds a range of improvements over Cascade Lake or the enhanced Skylake cores such as:

Improved Front end: higher capacity and improved branch predictorWider and deeper machine: wider allocation and execution resources + larger structuresEnhancements in TLBs, single-thread execution, prefetchingServer enhancements - larger Mid-level Cache (L2) + second FMA

Intel also adds in a range of new SIMD instructions exclusive to the Sunny Cove server processors that are mainly meant to increase performance in Cryptography and compression/decompression workloads. That along with enhanced software and algorithmic support will allow Intel gains of up to 8X per core over Cascade Lake.

Intel Xeon CPU Families (Preliminary):