Intel unveils AI-driven 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors

New Delhi: Chip maker Intel has unveiled new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and additions to its hardware and software AI portfolio.

It will enable customers to accelerate the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics workloads running in data center, network and intelligent-edge environments, Intel said. 

“Intel’s new 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors makes AI inference and training more widely deployable on general-purpose CPUs for applications that include image classification, recommendation engines, speech recognition and language modeling,” the company said in a statement.

Intel said it is further extending its investment in built-in AI acceleration in the new 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors through the integration of bfloat16 support into the processor’s unique Intel DL Boost technology. 

“Bfloat16 is a compact numeric format that uses half the bits as today’s FP32 format but achieves comparable model accuracy with minimal — if any — software changes required. The addition of bfloat16 support accelerates both AI training and inference performance in the CPU,” Intel added. 

The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named “Cooper Lake”) evolve Intel’s 4- and 8-socket processor offering. 

The processor is designed for deep learning, virtual machine (VM) density, in-memory database, mission-critical applications and analytics-intensive workloads, Intel said.