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Note Intel said Skylake server chips would introduce AVX-512 instructions, but Skylake consumer chips don't have those. That could mean the server chips will ha

Note Intel said Skylake server chips would introduce AVX-512 instructions, but Skylake consumer chips don't have those. That could mean the server chips will have a different vector unit with different performance. That may not be a huge deal if the gather improvements are all you care about and they're present in both consumer and server chips. But worth knowing.

nkurz 11y ago
Thanks for the details. Yes, this is part of the reason I'm not interested in buying something currently, and instead am looking to do just some inexpensive testing.
nkurz 11y ago
Intel coincidentally officially launched the first Skylake Xeon's today: http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88210/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-v5-Family#@Server http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88210/Intel-Xeon-Proces... Interestingly, despite being Skylake server chips, it looks like none of them support AVX-512. Do you happen to know which models actually will have support? Or for that matter, what are all the differences between the "server" E3v5 Xeons and the "consumer" Skylake chips? Support for ECC RAM is the only one I see at a glance: http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-Intel-Core-i7-Processors#@Mobile http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-In...
- twotwotwo 11y ago
  Haha, I saw that and asked the same thing at Anandtech. These server chips are slight tweaks to consumer chips. They work with server chipsets [and ECC RAM as you caught!]; don't know what else differs. There aren't yet "large" Xeons (E5 or E7) on Broadwell or Skylake, only Haswell. The table of Haswell chips from Wikipedia is the best handle I can quickly get on the how the server chip line works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture) - E5 and E7 have more cores and L3 cache - They also support more sockets (the model numbers start 2, 4, or 8 according to how many sockets they support) - They're released a lot later: the first Haswell chip was in June 2013, but all the E7s in the tables are listed as May 2015. And Haswell is v3 so Broadwell is v4 and Skylake is v5. If this roadmap is right, larger Broadwell chips will come next year and large Skylake Xeons might not be until 2017(!): http://www.theplatform.net/2015/05/26/intel-lets-slip-broadwell-skylake-xeon-chip-specs/ http://www.theplatform.net/2015/05/26/intel-lets-slip-broadw... I was vaguely aware that architectures would mature before working their way up the server line, but not of how long that pipeline was. Anyway, guess we shouldn't hold our breath!

nkurz 11y ago

Thanks for the details. Yes, this is part of the reason I'm not interested in buying something currently, and instead am looking to do just some inexpensive testing.

nkurz 11y ago

Intel coincidentally officially launched the first Skylake Xeon's today: http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88210/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-v5-Family#@Server http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88210/Intel-Xeon-Proces... Interestingly, despite being Skylake server chips, it looks like none of them support AVX-512. Do you happen to know which models actually will have support? Or for that matter, what are all the differences between the "server" E3v5 Xeons and the "consumer" Skylake chips? Support for ECC RAM is the only one I see at a glance: http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-Intel-Core-i7-Processors#@Mobile http://ark.intel.com/products/family/88392/6th-Generation-In...

twotwotwo 11y ago
Haha, I saw that and asked the same thing at Anandtech. These server chips are slight tweaks to consumer chips. They work with server chipsets [and ECC RAM as you caught!]; don't know what else differs. There aren't yet "large" Xeons (E5 or E7) on Broadwell or Skylake, only Haswell. The table of Haswell chips from Wikipedia is the best handle I can quickly get on the how the server chip line works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture) - E5 and E7 have more cores and L3 cache - They also support more sockets (the model numbers start 2, 4, or 8 according to how many sockets they support) - They're released a lot later: the first Haswell chip was in June 2013, but all the E7s in the tables are listed as May 2015. And Haswell is v3 so Broadwell is v4 and Skylake is v5. If this roadmap is right, larger Broadwell chips will come next year and large Skylake Xeons might not be until 2017(!): http://www.theplatform.net/2015/05/26/intel-lets-slip-broadwell-skylake-xeon-chip-specs/ http://www.theplatform.net/2015/05/26/intel-lets-slip-broadw... I was vaguely aware that architectures would mature before working their way up the server line, but not of how long that pipeline was. Anyway, guess we shouldn't hold our breath!