The new desktop processor marks the first time Intel is including a dedicated acceleration circuitry for artificial intelligence — called a ‘neural processing unit.’
The Intel Xeon server chip includes two compute tiles that have a combined 64 computing cores, each with acceleration for processing neural networks.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on Thursday unveiled the chip giant’s latest microprocessors for desktop and server, and showed off a forthcoming AI processor, at a morning event at the Nasdaq Market Site in New York City.
Artificial intelligence is probably “underestimated,” said Gelsinger, likely to represent at some point a third of the global economy, but also at risk of consuming a quarter or more of the world’s energy if not developed efficiently.
The fourth-generation of Intel’s Xeon server, code-named Emerald Rapids, offers performance that is 21% higher, on average, than the previous generation, Sapphire Rapids, said Intel. The new server also makes possible a 36% increase in “average performance per watt,” said Intel.
With 64 individual processing cores, the new Xeon can achieve improvements in AI such as speeding up large language model processing by 23%, said Intel’s head of data center computing, Sandra Rivera.
