Intel’s 5th Generation Xeon Scalable Processors, built on the Emerald Rapids architecture, can benefit from a dramatic performance boost when running AVX-512 workloads.
An Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ CPU can nearly double average performance while increasing energy efficiency when running AVX-512 instructions in a handful of specific workloads, according to the benchmarking site Phoronix.
AVX-512 is an instruction set that improves the performance of a CPU by executing the same instructions across different data points – known as single instruction multiple data (SIMD).
Its main purpose is to accelerate data compression, cryptographic calculations and image processing tasks. However, it has been criticized in the past for poor energy efficiency and excessive heat generation. But recent generations of Intel Xeon CPUs do not exhibit these side effects, making it a viable way to utilize the full potential of server-oriented processors.
Performance gain activated
Phoronix was running two 64-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ CPUs on Ubuntu 23.10 with the Linux 6.5 kernel in the Intel Eagle Stream reference server. This system was equipped with 1TB DDR5 RAM and a 3TB SSD.
In several benchmarks – including Embree, OpenVKL and Y-Cruncher – running AVX-512 doubled the CPU’s performance. Notably, on the OpenVINO benchmark, the performance when enabling AVX-512 increased to more than three times.
OpenVINO is a toolkit that Intel has devised around neural networks; Notably, OpenVINO allows developers to quickly create applications for a variety of AI-focused tasks, including emulating vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing.
According to Phoronix, the CPU also experienced no major power consumption or heat generation concerns, which highlighted the benefits of AVX-512 today, despite concerns when the technology first came on the scene.
While Intel’s latest 5th generation Xeon CPU may be one of the best processors for servers, based on raw performance, it hasn’t reached the dizzying heights of AMD’s 96-core counterpart – the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX. This CPU holds the world record in a number of categoriescomfortably everything Intel has to offer at the time of writing.