Today at its inaugural Intel Vision event, Intel announced advancements across silicon, software and services, showcasing how it brings together technologies and the ecosystem to unlock business value for customers today and in the future. Among the benefits highlighted across real-world examples are improved business results and insights, reduced total cost of ownership, accelerated time to market and value, and positive global impact.
“We are in the most dynamic global market of our lifetime. The challenges organizations face today are complex and interconnected, and success depends on their ability to quickly adopt and maximize leading-edge technologies and infrastructure,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. “Today, we are excited to share how we are applying our scale, resources and the magic of silicon, software and services to help customers and partners accelerate digital transformations in this complex environment.”
New Silicon, Software and Services to Fuel Digital Transformations
The technology superpowers of artificial intelligence, ubiquitous computing, pervasive connectivity, and cloud-to-edge infrastructure are fueling unprecedented demand for semiconductors and opening the door to infinite possibilities, from a truly hybrid workforce to entirely new immersive experiences. At the same time, businesses face growing pressures around supply chain, security, sustainability, and the ability to adapt to the complexity of new workloads. Intel is working to help address these challenges with the introduction of new hardware, software, and services from cloud to edge to client.
Today’s announcements include:
- A major leap in deep learning processing with Habana Gaudi2: Gaudi processors are used for the highest end deep learning AI training and are known for their ability to enable customers to train more and pay less. Launching today, Habana Gaudi2 and Greco AI accelerators are built on a single software stack, Synapse AI, that easily supports different architectures, enabling end-users to take advantage of the processors’ performance and efficiency. In addition, Gaudi2 delivers two times better AI training performance compared with current in-market A100-based offerings for key vision and NLP workloads1.
- 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable sets a new standard for modern performance: Intel is shipping initial SKUs of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids) today. These are the first of many SKUs, with more due to ramp throughout the remainder of the year. The 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors deliver exceptional overall performance, will support DDR5, PCIe Gen5 and CXL 1.1, and are equipped with new integrated accelerators that deliver up to 30x performance versus the prior generation through software and hardware optimizations for AI workloads2. For telco networks it also has new capabilities that deliver up to two times3 capacity gains for virtual radio access network (vRAN) deployments. In high performance computing, Intel Xeon processors, code-named Sapphire Rapids with high bandwidth memory (HBM), will dramatically boost memory bandwidth available to the processor, super-charging high-performance computing.
- AI made more accessible for enterprises through Project Apollo: In partnership with Accenture, Intel kicked off Project Apollo, a program that will provide enterprises with more than 30 open-source AI solutions kits that are optimally designed to make AI more accessible to customers in on-prem, cloud and edge environments. The first Project Apollo kits will be released in the next few months.
- Preparing for the data center of the future with IPUs: Intel unveiled its IPU roadmap extending through 2026, featuring new FPGA + Intel architecture platforms (code-named Hot Springs Canyon) and the Mount Morgan (MMG) ASIC, as well as next-generation 800GB products. IPUs are dedicated products with hardened acceleration for infrastructure compute needs, allowing businesses to accomplish tasks quicker and solve problems faster.
- Single GPU solution for media transcode, visual graphics and inference in the cloud: Intel’s data center GPU, code-named Arctic Sound-M (ATS-M), is the industry’s first discrete GPU with an AV1 hardware encoder. ATS-M is a versatile GPU with leadership transcode quality and performance targeting 150 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Developers will be able to easily design for ATS-M with an open software stack through oneAPI. ATS-M will be available in two form factors and in more than 15 system designs from partners including Dell Technologies, Supermicro, Cisco, Inspur, HPE, and H3C. It will launch in 2022’s third quarter.
- New 12th Gen Intel Core HX processors for hybrid work: The company completed the 12th Gen family with the launch of the new 12th Gen Intel Core HX processors. Created for professionals who need maximum performance and flexibility to navigate a hybrid environment, and with up to 16 cores and clock speeds up to 5 GHz, the Intel Core i9-12900HX processor is the world’s best mobile workstation platform4.
Recognizing that users also want the flexibility to tap into compute resources when and where they need them, Intel provided a first concept demonstration of its software infrastructure initiative: Project Endgame. Applications can take advantage of this software infrastructure layer that enables devices to harness computing resources from other devices within the network to provide an always-available, low latency, continual compute service. For example, a demanding GPU workload running on one device can sense and tap into additional graphics processing horsepower from a more powerful machine to enhance the user’s experience. Project Endgame is in development, and Intel will begin beta testing the first milestones of the technology this year.
Today’s announcements also included an early look at steps Intel is taking to enable service models across the ecosystem. The introduction of the Intel On Demand service offering helps enterprises meet the needs of evolving workloads, product sustainability and opportunities to scale systems near the data. Currently offered through select partners HPE GreenLake, Lenovo TruScale and PhoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud, Intel introduced a new consumption business model to enable customers to align their infrastructure with their business needs and requirements.
Working Together to Create World-Changing Technology
The power and positive impact of Intel’s broad portfolio truly comes to life through examples that show not only how the hardware, software and services work together, but also the deep way that Intel collaborates with customers, partners and the ecosystem.
