Atop the server processor market but under renewed competitive pressure, Intel introduced its most powerful server processors to date, promising to cover a wide range of modern data center workloads with the new family of chips.
The second generation of the Intel Xeon Scalable processor lineup will be introduced later on Tuesday at an event in San Francisco, and most of them are available today to system builders like Dell and HPE. The new processors reflect recent shifts in data center demand for processors that can accommodate a wider variety of workloads than in the past, especially given the rise in specialized processors for artificial intelligence research.
The Cascade Lake chips being introduced today are upgraded versions of the more significant architectural changes unveiled last year with the Skylake processor designs. Intel is also introducing new memory and networking chips Tuesday at the event that will help customers take advantage of the increased processing power by quickly getting that data where it needs to go.
Intel controls around 95 percent of the server processor market, but last year it said it expects to lose some market share in 2019. Manufacturing delays have opened up room for a competitive processor roadmap from AMD to catch the eye of potential server chip buyers, and Amazon Web Services’ Graviton chip introduced last November could be a proving point for the long-awaited arrival of Arm-based chips in the data center.
Intel executives are currently speaking during the event, and we’ll update this post with more information as needed.
