Intel Unveils New Xeon 6 Line as Data Center Chip Battle EscalatesIntel Unveils New Xeon 6 Line as Data Center Chip Battle Escalates

Intel has expanded its family of Xeon 6 processors with new high-performance chips designed for enterprises with compute-intensive needs, such as artificial intelligence, virtualization, and databases.

The chip giant unveiled its Xeon 6700/6500P series processors, which feature performance cores (P-cores) that deliver an average of 1.4 times better performance than Intel’s previous generation processors across a variety of enterprise workloads.

With today’s announcement, the company said it has completed its rollout of Xeon 6 processors. These processors offer two product families: P-core chips, which are focused on performance, and efficient cores (E-cores), which balance energy efficiency with performance and are designed for public and private clouds.

Intel shipped its first E-core chip, the 144-core Xeon 6700E, last June, followed by its first P-core chip, the high-end, 128-core 6900P processor, in September, which is built for workloads that need all-out performance, such as AI and high-performance computing (HPC).

Diversified Applications

The new Xeon 6700/6500P line of P-core chips features 8 to 86 cores and is designed for a broad set of enterprise requirements, analysts said.

“Intel is filling out its portfolio, especially for customers that have different needs or applications that have different needs,” said Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at Tirias Research, in an interview with Data Center Knowledge.

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“What we’ve seen from both Intel and AMD in the server segment is that there is not a one-size-fits-all anymore.”

With diversified applications in mind, Intel also launched the Intel Xeon 6 SoC chip for telecommunications companies’ edge environments. Meanwhile, Intel’s high-end E-core chip, the 288-core 6900E processor, is now in production and has been deployed by a large cloud customer, said Ronak Singhal, Intel’s senior fellow and chief architect of Xeon products, during a media briefing.

Singhal did not disclose who the customer is, but he said Intel is working with each of its cloud customers to deploy the 288-core processor for their own custom needs.

The Data Center Chip War Heats Up

Intel’s latest Xeon 6 announcements come as AMD continues to grab market share from Intel. While Intel still dominates, AMD’s server revenue during the 2024 fourth quarter reached 35.5% – a 3.7% year-over-year increase and 1.6% quarter-over-quarter increase, according to recent data from Mercury Research.

AMD launched its fifth-generation AMD Epyc server CPU in October. The new AMD Epyc 9005 series processor, formerly code-named Turin, is a high-performance, energy-efficient CPU that is designed for cloud, enterprise and AI workloads.

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While AMD’s market share growth continues to turn heads, the latest data suggests it may be leveling off. Meanwhile, Intel is finding its footing in the server market with the release of its Xeon 6 processors, said Matt Kimball, vice president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

“While AMD has continued to grow both its unit and revenue share, its rate of growth is not nearly as fast as it has been, which is an indication that Intel is protecting its enterprise customer base,” Kimball told Data Center Knowledge.

AMD’s fast market share growth has primarily come from cloud providers, large enterprises that operate like hyperscalers and organizations that have HPC workloads, he said. But the area AMD has not performed as well in is the traditional enterprise market, where Intel dominates, he said.

Kimball said the new Xeon 6700P line of processors, designed for traditional enterprise mission-critical applications such as ERP, virtualization and databases, further establishes Intel in the enterprise because of its performance, enhanced security and ecosystem.

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“The enterprise market is where Intel has done well and is going to continue to do well,” he said.

For years, AMD has been able to argue that it has more cores and memory, which translates to better performance and TCO, but no longer, he said. For example, the Intel 6900E, with its 288 cores, leapfrogs AMD on cores.

“With Xeon 6, for the first time in a long time, Intel has found parity or advantage over AMD,” Kimball said.

More Details on Intel Xeon 6700/6500P CPUs

Intel executives used today’s launch of the Intel 6700/6500P to restate the case for Intel Xeon 6 chips, particularly for enterprises reaching the end of life with their existing servers and needing to upgrade.

During the briefing, Singhal touted Intel Xeon 6’s security features, built-in AI accelerators and faster memory performance through Multiplexed Rank DIMM (MRDIMM). The company also said it allows for an average of 5-to-1 consolidation of five-year-old servers with the potential of up to 10-to-1 server consolidation in some use cases, which results in up to 68% savings in total cost of ownership.  

Intel also claims that its Intel Xeon 6 processors provide up to 1.5 times better performance in AI inferencing while using one-third fewer cores than AMD’s latest fifth-generation Epyc processors.

McGregor, the Tirias Research analyst, said the server market is exciting because Intel and AMD have competitive solutions and data center operators also have Arm alternatives.

Many organizations last upgraded their servers during COVID-19, so it’s time for a refresh, he said. When it comes to x86 chips, they should test both before choosing.

“It’s a great time for companies that are evaluating their product lines,” McGregor said. “Intel’s Xeon 6 is impressive and competitive, but they have a much stronger competitor now than they’ve ever had before in AMD.”

In other news, Singhal said that a new x86 advisory group featuring Intel, AMD and its partners recently met for the first time to discuss the future of the x86 architecture. The two chip rivals formed the group in October to shape the future of x86 and to ensure architecture compatibility, simplify software development and develop innovative and scalable solutions.