Sapphire Rapids

Intel microprocessor, released in 2023

Sapphire Rapids is a codename for Intel's server (fourth generation Xeon Scalable) and workstation (Xeon W-2400/2500 and Xeon W-3400/3500) processors based on the Golden Cove microarchitecture and produced using Intel 7.^[1][2][3][4] It features up to 60 cores and an array of accelerators, and it is the first generation of Intel server and workstation processors to use a chiplet design.

Sapphire Rapids is part of the Eagle Stream server platform.^[5][6] In addition, it powers Aurora, an exascale supercomputer in the United States, at Argonne National Laboratory.^[7]

History

Sapphire Rapids has been a long-standing Intel project along Alder Lake in development for over five years and has been subjected to many delays.^[8] It was first announced by Intel at their Investor Meeting in May 2019 with the intention of Sapphire Rapids succeeding Ice Lake and Cooper Lake in 2021.^[9][10] Intel again announced details on Sapphire Rapids in their August 2021 Architecture Day presentation with no mention of a launch date.^[11]

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger tacitly blamed the previous Intel leadership as a reason for Sapphire Rapid's many delays.^[8] One industry analyst firm claimed that Intel was having problems with yields from its Intel 7 node with yields of 50–60% on higher core-count silicon.^[12] Sapphire Rapids was originally scheduled for a launch in the first half of 2022.^[13] It was later scheduled for release in Q4 2022 but was again delayed to early 2023.^[14] The specific announcement date of January 10, 2023 was not revealed by Intel until November 2022.^[15]

The server processor lineup was released on January 10, 2023, and the workstation processor lineup was released on February 15, 2023.^[16] Those processors were available for shipping on March 14 of that year.^[17] Intel shipped the millionth of this generation Xeon processors in 2023.^[18]

Features

CPU

• Up to 60 Golden Cove CPU cores per package^[19]
  • Up to 15 cores per tile, a 60 core Xeon Platinum 8490H uses 4 dies populated with 15 cores to have 60 cores in total
• AVX512-FP16^[20]
• TSX Suspend Load Address Tracking (TSXLDTRK)^[21]
• Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX)^[19]
• Trust Domain Extensions (TDX), a collection of technologies to help deploy hardware-isolated virtual machines (VMs) called trust domains (TDs)^[22]
• User Interrupts (UINTR), a new architectural feature allowing interrupts to be delivered to user-mode software without kernel involvement.^[23][24][25]

Accelerators

• In-Field Scan (IFS), a technology that allows for testing the processor for potential hardware faults without taking it completely offline^[26]
• Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA), allows for speeding up data copy and transformation between different kinds of storage^[27][28]
• QuickAssist Technology (QAT), allows for improved performance of compression and encryption tasks^[28]
• Dynamic Load Balancer (DLB), allows for offloading tasks of load balancing, packet prioritization and queue management^[28]
• In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA), allows accelerating in-memory databases and big data analytics^[28]

Not all accelerators are available in all processor models. Some accelerators are available under the Intel On Demand program, also known as Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), where a license is required to activate a given accelerator that is physically present in the processor. The license can be obtained as a one-time purchase or as a paid subscription. Activating the license requires support in the operating system. A driver with the necessary support was added in Linux kernel version 6.2.^[29][28]

I/O

• PCI Express 5.0^[19]
• Direct Media Interface 4.0
• 8-channel DDR5 ECC memory support up to DDR5-4800, up to 2 DIMMs per channel^[30]
• On-package High Bandwidth Memory 2.0e memory as L4 cache on Xeon Max models^[30][31]
• Compute Express Link 1.1^[19]

Die configurations

Sapphire Rapids come in two varieties: the low-core-count variety uses a single die (MCC), and the high-core-count variety uses multiple dies on a single package (XCC).

XCC multi-die configuration

• Multi-chiplet chip with four tiles linked by 2.5D Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridges. Each tile is a 400mm² system on a chip, providing both compute cores and I/O.^[32]
  • Each tile contains 15 Golden Cove cores, and a single UPI link
  • Each tile's memory controller provides two channels of DDR5 ECC supporting 4 DIMMs (2 per channel) and 1 TB of memory with a maximum of 8 channels, 16 DIMMs, and 4 TB memory across 4 tiles^[33]
  • A tile provides up to 32 PCIe 5.0 lanes, but one of the eight PCIe controllers of a CPU is usually reserved for DMI, resulting in a maximum of 112 non-chipset lanes. This maximum is only reached in the W-3400 series processors, while the server processors have 80 (20 per tile).^[34]

List of Sapphire Rapids processors

Sapphire Rapids-HBM (High Bandwidth Memory/Xeon Max Series)

Xeon Max processors contain 64 GB of High Bandwidth Memory.

Sapphire Rapids-SP (Scalable Performance)

With its maximum of 60 cores, Sapphire Rapids-SP competes with AMD's Epyc 8004/9004 Genoa with up to 96 cores and Bergamo with up to 128 cores. Sapphire Rapids Xeon server processors are scalable from single-socket configurations up to 8 socket configurations.^[35][36]

Suffixes to denote:^[37]

• +: Includes 1 of each of the four accelerators: DSA, IAA, QAT, DLB
• H: Database and analytics workloads, supports 4S (Xeon Gold) and/or 8S (Xeon Platinum) configurations and includes all of the accelerators
• M: Media transcode workloads
• N: Network/5G/Edge workloads (High TPT/Low Latency), some are uniprocessor
• P: Cloud and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) workloads
• Q: Liquid cooling
• S: Storage & Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) workloads
• T: Long-life use/High thermal case
• U: Uniprocessor (some workload-specific SKUs may also be uniprocessor)
• V: Optimized for cloud and software as a service (SaaS) workloads, some are uniprocessor
• Y: Speed Select Technology-Performance Profile (SST-PP) enabled (some workload-specific SKUs may also support SST-PP)
• Y+: Speed Select Technology-Performance Profile (SST-PP) enabled and includes 1 of each of the accelerators.

Sapphire Rapids-WS (Workstation)

56-core CPU Intel Xeon w-3495X equipped with 256 GiB DDR5 RAM

With its maximum of 60 cores, Sapphire Rapids-WS competes with AMD's Threadripper PRO 5000WX Chagall with up to 64 cores.^[38] Like Intel's Core product segmentation into i3, i5, i7 and i9, Sapphire Rapids-WS is labeled Xeon w3, w5, w7 and w9.^[39] Sapphire Rapids-WS was unveiled in February 2023, and was made available for OEMs in March.^[40][41] CPUs with "X" suffix have its multiplier unlocked for overclocking.^[42]

• No suffix letter: Locked clock multiplier
• X: Unlocked clock multiplier (adjustable with no ratio limit)
• Xeon W-2400/2500 uses a monolithic design and supports up to 64 PCI Express 5.0 lanes, while Xeon W-3400/3500 uses a chiplet design and supports up to 112 lanes. Both support 8 DMI 4.0 lanes.

See also

• Intel's process–architecture–optimization model
• Intel's tick–tock model
• List of Intel CPU microarchitectures

References

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