In Pictures: Intel Xeon 'Emerald Rapids' Launch update from December 2023

Intel's 5th Generation Xeon processor was previewed at a press and analyst event at the company's campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, in early December 2023.

At the event, Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center and AI Group, highlighted the huge strides that have been made in the realm of artificial intelligence, and the need for the semiconductor industry to keep pace with the world’s growing appetite for data.

“While AI and machine learning has been around for decades, it’s really in these last 10 years… that the rate of capability of these models has vastly accelerated. The world is generating 300 million terabytes of data every day. That would be equivalent to everyone in the US consuming 500 hours of video content every single day.”

Rivera added: “We are at the beginning of AI. It’s a journey that will [continue] for years to come. We see a huge opportunity for Intel and our ecosystem to participate and drive the growth and success of AI in all types of deployment across the globe.”

Emerald Rapids, the 5th Generation Xeon CPU, features features up to 64 cores and promises 40% better performance than its predecessor, according to Intel.

Discussing the development of Emerald Rapids, Lisa Spelman, corporate vice president and general manager of Xeon products and solutions, said: “The Xeon journey has been a continuous evolution and investment in both our hardware and our software portfolio. And it’s those years of investment on both sides that have led us to where we are today.”

“Emerald Rapids takes Sapphire Rapids, and moves it forward,” said Ronak Singhal, a senior principal engineer at Intel (pictured, right). “One of the biggest changes we have on Emerald Rapids is a significantly larger last-level cache, and that plays out with some of the real-world workload performance improvements.”

During the Emerald Rapids press event, Singhal and Sailesh Kottapalli gave a deep dive into the processor’s architecture.

The press event wasn’t just about Emerald Rapids. The Intel team pulled focus on Gaudi, Intel’s AI accelerator.

Reza Jazayeri, who leads the Gaudi customer engineering teams, said: “In November, we published the updated MLPerf with GPT-3 training and we demonstrated more than 2x performance improvement from our previous ML publication in May.”

He added: “Gaudi 3 accelerators come into production in 2024, and we have commitment from one of the largest OEMs in the industry to bring that to market.”

Vasudev Lal, who leads the Cognitive AI department at Intel Labs, discussed the many ways his team has been working with Gaudi.

“In many respects, my team has been customer number zero for the Gaudi product line,” he said. “Over the past year, we have trained multiple transformer and diffusion models on Gaudi-based clusters. These form the underlying framework for generative AI solutions.”

Andres Rodriguez is an Intel Fellow and chief AI architect. “To bring AI everywhere, Intel has a broad portfolio that covers the entire AI spectrum, from training across multiple nodes to deploying on the cloud,” he said during the press event.

“In addition to servers, AI running on local devices is a key ingredient to the ecosystem growth of AI. The Intel Core Ultra processor is a critical player in this transformation.

“Over the past several years, we’ve worked with the ecosystem to optimize models and deliver these to the PC ecosystem. We have partnered with over 100 software vendors to deliver acceleration to developers. Through 2025, we intend to ship over 100 million processors with AR acceleration.”

Suzi Jewett, general manager of Xeon Products at Intel, discussed some of the security improvements within 5th Generation Xeon processors.

“Intel security engines built into Xeon scalable processors deliver enhanced security capabilities that allow for activating even the most sensitive data, all while remaining private and confidential.

“Whether you're working in the cloud at the edge or on-prem, Intel security engines help you extract the most value from sensitive or regulated data.”

While the market has plenty to get its teeth into with the launch of Emerald Rapids, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said work was “well underway” on the next Xeon launches, Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest, the latter of which will feature 288 cores.

“We’re excited because not only is Emerald going to be a great product, but we’re well underway on Granite and Sierra Forest,” Gelsinger said during the pre-launch event in December. “I’m driving the team like crazy to get those accelerated into the marketplace.”

For more information on Emerald Rapids, check out our full launch coverage.

While the market has plenty to get its teeth into with the launch of Emerald Rapids, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said work was “well underway” on the next Xeon launches, Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest, the latter of which will feature 288 cores.

“We’re excited because not only is Emerald going to be a great product, but we’re well underway on Granite and Sierra Forest,” Gelsinger said during the pre-launch event in December. “I’m driving the team like crazy to get those accelerated into the marketplace.”

For more information on Emerald Rapids, check out our full launch coverage.