The only item that Intel would confirm here is that the 28-core processor is built on one of its 14nm nodes. For anyone thinking it was a 10nm node, this confirms that it was not, however it does not say much more; Intel is purposefully keeping its cards close to its chest on this one. The smart money seems to be that the chip is likely to at least be based on the Skylake-X processors, like the 28-core Xeon Platinum 8176 or Xeon Platinum 8180, rather than the future Cascade Lake platform, however Intel has also promised that the consumer version of Cascade Lake-X will be coming by the end of the year.
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Speaking with the motherboard vendors and OEMs in general about Intel’s HEDT plans is a tricky business, but most seem to be focused on their current X299 motherboards right now rather than a series of X299 refreshes that normally accompany an HEDT update.
Again, this was one of the items that Intel wants to keep close to its chest. After confirming that the 5.0 GHz number was an overclocked value, it does mean that the base TDP for a ‘retail’ processor will be much lower, as the chip will be running at much lower clocks. The Xeon Platinum 8180 has a base frequency of 2.5 GHz and a turbo of 3.8 GHz for a TDP of 205W (TDP being defined at the base frequency only), and we know that the LGA3647 socket by its Intel reference design was made for chips up to 265W, so the frequency of the 28-core part shown by Intel for extreme workstations is only likely to be a +100-400 MHz more at most.
Interestingly enough, Intel states the maximum operating temperature of the 8180 at 205W TDP as 84C case temperature and 98C DTS, which sounds slightly higher than its standard settings for enterprise chips. It would mean that this new 28-core, if it comes out at 265W TDP, is likely to be a super high bin of the part. Of course, this will come with a higher cost.
One of the interesting numbers to come out of the initial announcement were that overclockers were seeing 1000W power draw for an 18-core Core i9-7980XE at 4.9 GHz, so one would assume that a 28-core at 5.0 GHz would be more. We know that the demo that achieved 5.0 GHz was using a Hailea water chiller capable of 1770W of cooling, and the system being used had a 1600W power supply with a low power graphics card. That gives us a good idea for low-bound and high-bound. However Intel would not help narrow down our estimates.
One of our points to Intel was that the story around the 28-core announcement was not ideally communicated. (ed: this is an understatement) The systems holding the machines were not very well described in what they were doing, leading to massive amounts of speculation. The insides of the systems were dimly lit, and the cooling apparatus was hidden. Intel could have made the story around the parts be about the technology behind the demonstration, and the ability to push the limits of the hardware to new heights, however, even if the word ‘overclocked’ was accidentally not said on stage, these part of the story was not explained. Not in the ‘it wasn’t explained well’, it just wasn’t explained period. The best thing Intel can do at this point is to grab the story by the horns, and show that this is a passion project: let the readers and reviewers know about the platform, about the implementation (even if new explicit information isn’t shared), and that it actually takes a good amount of engineering prowess and skill to put on a 28-core, 5.0 GHz demonstration.
As it stands, we await further information.
