Intel Xeon 6 CPUs Deliver 90% Uplift In AI Versus 5th Gen Xeon, Xeon 6900P “Granite Rapids-AP” Launches In September

Intel has shared the first MLPerf performance figures of its next-gen Xeon 6 CPUs while confirming that the Xeon 6900P chips will launch in September.

In a recent press release, Intel showcased the AI performance of its upcoming Xeon 6 CPUs known as Granite Rapids AP. Intel says that the Xeon 6 processors can achieve up to 1.9x the geomean performance improvement in AI inference compared to the 5th gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" CPUs.

Furthermore, the performance uplift of Intel Xeon 6 processors is up to 17 times higher than the 3rd gen Xeon "Cascade Lake" series, which is an incredible difference Intel made in the last four years but also kind of expected given the new AI accelerators integrated within these chips along with newer instructions such as AVX-512 VNNI.

Intel submitted results across 6 MLPerf benchmarks for 5th gen Xeon and the latest Granite Rapids "Xeon 6900P" for the first time. The MPerf Inference v4.1 tests are now published at MLCommons and contain the result of the flagship Xeon 6 processor, the Xeon 6980P.

The MLPerf Inference v4.1 is the industry-standard AI performance benchmark suite, where Intel submitted its processors on ResNet50, RetinaNet, 3DUNet, BERT, DLRM v2, and GPT-J. The Xeon 6980P offered 1.9x higher AI inference performance in all these benchmarks. Compared to the 3rd-generation processors released in 2021, the performance was roughly 17 times higher on BERT and up to 15 times higher on ResNet50.

Pallavi Mahajan, Intel's corporate vice president and general manager of Data Center and AI Software said,

The newest MLPerf results show how continued investment and resourcing is critical for improving AI performance. Over the past four years, we have raised the bar for AI performance on Xeon processors by up to 17x based on MLPerf. As we near general availability later this year, we look forward to ramping Xeon 6 with our customers and partners

The Intel Xeon 6 6980P offers a staggering 128 cores, 256 threads configuration with clock speeds ranging from 2.0GHz to 3.2GHz. The processor offers 504 MB of L3 cache and has a TDP of 500W. There are four more Granite Rapids AP chips in the series with cores/threads ranging from 72 cores/144 threads to 120 cores/240 threads apart from the 6980P. Intel has already launched its first Xeon 6 lineup, the Sierra Forest "Xeon 6700E" series and September will mark the launch of the high-end P-Core family, Xeon 6900P (128 cores), followed by Xeon 6900E (288 Cores) and Xeon 6700P (86 Cores) in Q1 2025.

For Intel, such a strong AI performance matters a lot as it has five OEM partners: Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE, Quanta, and Supermicro, which use Intel's Xeon processors for building and selling computers and servers. Intel will unveil more information about the Granite Rapids AP "Xeon 6" CPUs during the official launch event in September.