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Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48 Core “Sapphire Rapids” CPU Benchmarks Leak, On Par With AMD’s 64 Core Milan Chips

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New benchmarks of the Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48-Core Sapphire Rapids CPU have leaked out which show competitive performance versus AMD’s Milan.

Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48-Core “Sapphire Rapids” CPU Trades Blows With AMD’s EPYC 7763 64-Core “Milan” Chips

The benchmark that has been discovered by HXL (@9550pro) shows us an engineering sample of the Intel Xeon Platinum 8468, one of the many Sapphire Rapids-SP CPUs. Based on the specs sheet that leaked earlier, the Xeon Platinum 8468 is going to feature 48 cores and 96 threads while using the 10nm ESF process node and the Golden Cove core architecture. The CPU is expected to feature 105 MB of L3 cache & a 350W TDP. The CPU is listed with 2.1 GHz clocks within Cinebench R23 and 800 MHz within CPU-z which suggests that the clock speeds aren’t close to the retail numbers.

The CPU tested is the 6th Stepping and we know from previous reports that the Sapphire Rapids-SP chips have gone through various steps to fix various bugs that the chips have encountered so far. It is reported that the CPU was tested within two benchmarks, one being Cinebench R23 & the other being V-Ray. The CPU was tested in a dual-socket configuration with 96 cores & 192 threads in total.

Starting with Cinebench R23, the chip scored 90411 points in multi-core and 1351 points in single-core. The CPU is definitely faster than retail EPYC Milan chips in single-core and comparable in the multi-core tests since the top EPYC 7763 scores around 90000-95000 points in the same test. This means that the EPYC 7763 is at best 8.5% faster in multi-threaded performance, a difference that can easily be overcome by final retail clock speeds. The EPYC chip also includes 33% more cores.

0

19357

38714

58071

77428

96785

116142

Threadripper 5995WX (64 x 1 LN2 OC)

EPYC Genoa ES (96 x 2 GNO)

EPYC 7773X (64 x 2 Milan-X)

Xeon Platinum 8468 ES (48 x 2 SPR-SP)

Xeon Platinum 8280L (28 x 8 CSL-SP)

Xeon Platinum 8480+ ES (56 x 2 SPR-SP)

Xeon Platinum 8480 ES (56 x 2 SPR-SP)

Xeon Platinum 8380 (40 x 2 ICL-SP)

Compared to an early ES EPYC Genoa chip, the Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 CPU with 48-cores and 96 threads or 96 cores and 192 threads in total is around 18% slower but once again, the Genoa chip offers 33% more threads. The full potential of EPYC Genoa 96-core chips is limited to 256 threads since that’s the maximum thread limit.

We also have V-Ray where the Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48-Core CPUs are listed in a 4-socket config but it was actually running a 2-socket config. The CPU clock speed is rated a bit higher at 3.0 GHz & the score is rated at 85,766 samples. Following is how the performance compares to other server chips:

0

16667

33334

50001

66668

83335

100002

EPYC 7773X (64 x 2 Milan-X)

Threadripper 5995WX (64 x 2 CGL)

Xeon Platinum 8468 ES (48 x 2 SPR-SP)

Xeon Platinum 8380 (40 x 4 ICL-SP)

Intel has moved the Sapphire Rapids-SP Xeon CPU launch to early 2023 so it looks like they will be competing with EPYC Genoa-X & Bergamo CPUs by the time they are widely available to x86 server customers. This kind of performance would have been competitive a few years back against Milan but with Zen 4 on the horizon, things look grim for Intel despite the major uplift over Ice Lake-SP which now seems too little.

Intel Xeon SP Families (Preliminary):

Family Branding Skylake-SP Cascade Lake-SP/AP Cooper Lake-SP Ice Lake-SP Sapphire Rapids Emerald Rapids Granite Rapids Diamond Rapids
Process Node 14nm+ 14nm++ 14nm++ 10nm+ Intel 7 Intel 7 Intel 3 Intel 3?
Platform Name Intel Purley Intel Purley Intel Cedar Island Intel Whitley Intel Eagle Stream Intel Eagle Stream Intel Mountain Stream
Intel Birch Stream
Intel Mountain Stream
Intel Birch Stream
Core Architecture Skylake Cascade Lake Cascade Lake Sunny Cove Golden Cove Raptor Cove Redwood Cove? Lion Cove?
IPC Improvement (Vs Prev Gen) 10% 0% 0% 20% 19% 8%? 35%? 39%?
MCP (Multi-Chip Package) SKUs No Yes No No Yes Yes TBD (Possibly Yes) TBD (Possibly Yes)
Socket LGA 3647 LGA 3647 LGA 4189 LGA 4189 LGA 4677 LGA 4677 TBD TBD
Max Core Count Up To 28 Up To 28 Up To 28 Up To 40 Up To 56 Up To 64? Up To 120? Up To 144?
Max Thread Count Up To 56 Up To 56 Up To 56 Up To 80 Up To 112 Up To 128? Up To 240? Up To 288?
Max L3 Cache 38.5 MB L3 38.5 MB L3 38.5 MB L3 60 MB L3 105 MB L3 120 MB L3? 240 MB L3? 288 MB L3?
Vector Engines AVX-512/FMA2 AVX-512/FMA2 AVX-512/FMA2 AVX-512/FMA2 AVX-512/FMA2 AVX-512/FMA2 AVX-1024/FMA3? AVX-1024/FMA3?
Memory Support DDR4-2666 6-Channel DDR4-2933 6-Channel Up To 6-Channel DDR4-3200 Up To 8-Channel DDR4-3200 Up To 8-Channel DDR5-4800 Up To 8-Channel DDR5-5600? Up To 12-Channel DDR5-6400? Up To 12-Channel DDR6-7200?
PCIe Gen Support PCIe 3.0 (48 Lanes) PCIe 3.0 (48 Lanes) PCIe 3.0 (48 Lanes) PCIe 4.0 (64 Lanes) PCIe 5.0 (80 lanes) PCIe 5.0 (80 Lanes) PCIe 6.0 (128 Lanes)? PCIe 6.0 (128 Lanes)?
TDP Range (PL1) 140W-205W 165W-205W 150W-250W 105-270W Up To 350W Up To 375W? Up To 400W? Up To 425W?
3D Xpoint Optane DIMM N/A Apache Pass Barlow Pass Barlow Pass Crow Pass Crow Pass? Donahue Pass? Donahue Pass?
Competition AMD EPYC Naples 14nm AMD EPYC Rome 7nm AMD EPYC Rome 7nm AMD EPYC Milan 7nm+ AMD EPYC Genoa ~5nm AMD EPYC Bergamo AMD EPYC Turin AMD EPYC Venice
Launch 2017 2018 2020 2021 2022 2023? 2024? 2025?