“AI is driving one of the most consequential eras of innovation the industry has ever seen,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel. “The magic of silicon is once again enabling exponential advancements in computing that will push the boundaries of human potential and power the global economy for years to come,” he added.
During his keynote at Computex 2024, Intel chieftain highlighted Intel’s powerful ecosystem helping to accelerate the AI opportunity. He was joined by industry leaders including Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen, ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella and Inventec’s President Jack Tsai.
Intel Xeon 6 processors
The entire Xeon 6 platform and family of processors is purpose-built for addressing these challenges with both E-core (Efficient-core, code-named Granite Rapids) and P-core (Performance-core) SKUs to address the broad array of use cases and workloads, from AI and other high-performance compute needs to scalable cloud-native applications. Both E-cores and P-cores are built on a compatible architecture with a shared software stack and an open ecosystem of hardware and software vendors. Xeon 6 P-cores (code-named Granite Rapids) are expected to launch next quarter.
Gaudi AI accelerators
Gelsinger also showcased a standard AI kit including eight Intel Gaudi 2 accelerators with a universal baseboard (UBB) that will be offered to system providers at USD 65,000. It is estimated to be one-third the cost of comparable competitive platforms. A kit including eight Intel Gaudi 3 accelerators with a UBB was also showcased at USD 125,000 which will be two-thirds the cost of comparable competitive platforms.
To make these AI systems broadly available, Intel is collaborating with top global system providers, including six new providers who announced they’re bringing Intel Gaudi 3 to market. These include Asus, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Inventec, Quanta and Wistron, expanding the production offerings from leading system providers Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and Supermicro.
Intel Lunar Lake
Apart from data centers, Intel is scaling its AI footprint at the edge and in the PC space as well. With more than 90,000 edge deployments and 200 million CPUs delivered, Intel has dominated enterprise choice for decades.
Today, it is 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.
According to Boston Consulting Group, AI PCs are projected to make up 80% of the PC market by 2028. In response, Intel reveals the architectural details of Lunar Lake, the flagship processor for the next generation of AI PCs from Intel. The focus will be on graphics, AI processing power and power-efficient compute performance for the thin-and-light segment. Lunar Lake will deliver up to 40 per cent lower SoC power and more than three times the AI compute.
Lunar Lake will not only focus on power and efficiency but also introduce the fourth-generation Intel neural processing unit (NPU) with up to 48 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance. This will also include an all-new GPU design, code-named Battlemage, combining two new innovations: Xe2 GPU cores for graphics and Xe Matrix Extension (XMX) arrays for AI.
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.