At its Computex 2024 exhibition, Intel unveiled the Xeon 6700E (Sierra Forest) server processors, an innovation acknowledging its thrust into energy efficiency. Making a critical part of the Xeon 6 family along with the future Granite Rapids chips – due to be released later – the Xeon 6700E employs only energy-efficient E-cores, while the Granite Rapids, or the Xeon 6900s, are built exclusively on high-performance P-cores.
Introducing the Xeon 6700E Series
The Xeon 6700E series comprises seven energy-efficient server processors with E-cores ranging from 64 to 144. They offer base frequencies from 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz and Turbo frequencies from 2.6 GHz to 3.2 GHz. The reported energy consumption of these processors varies between 205W and 330W.
Most models are built to function within dual-processor server systems and come packaged with L3 cache memory ranging from 96 MB to 106 MB. Some models support DDR5-5600 standard RAM while others claim DDR-6400 RAM support. Furthermore, each processor in the series is equipped with 88 PCIe 5.0 lines.
Performance Metrics
Intel reports that the 128-core Xeon 6756E provides up to 1.34 times the energy efficiency against the 64-core, 128-thread AMD EPYC 9534 at near equivalent performance rates across disparate scenarios.
Comparing a two-processor setup with 128-core Xeon 6756E against a configuration with two 64-core Xeon Platinum 8592+ (5th generation), Intel noted a performance edge for Xeon 6 – up to 1.55 times higher in general-purpose loads, up to 1.63 times in database operations, up to 1.49 times in web-based operations, up to 1.52 times in media handling, and up to 1.66 times in network operations.
While recognizing a fourfold energy efficiency advantage for Sierra Forest compared to the 2nd generation Xeon when handling media applications.
Availability and Future Prospects
Systems based on the Xeon 6700E (Sierra Forest) processors are available starting from today. Meanwhile, the highly anticipated release of the high-performance Xeon 6900 (Granite Rapids) server processors is expected in the next quarter.
