Intel Sets New AI Standard with Core Ultra and 5th Gen Xeon Processors

In a landmark event in New York City, Intel has unveiled its latest technological advancements, the Intel Core Ultra and 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors, as part of its "AI Everywhere" initiative. This launch represents a significant expansion of Intel's AI portfolio, aiming to integrate AI capabilities comprehensively across a spectrum of platforms, including data centers, clouds, networks, edge devices, and personal computers.

The Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family marks a pivotal moment in Intel's history, being the first built on the Intel 4 process technology and benefiting from the company’s most significant architectural shift in 40 years. Described as Intel's most power-efficient client processor, the Core Ultra heralds the beginning of the AI PC era. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger emphasized the transformative potential of this technology, stating, "AI innovation is poised to raise the digital economy’s impact up to as much as one-third of global gross domestic product.” Gelsinger further highlighted Intel's commitment to empowering customers with the ability to integrate and run AI seamlessly in all their applications — both in the cloud and locally at the PC and edge, where data is generated and used.

Alongside the Core Ultra, the 5th Gen Intel Xeon processor family was introduced, featuring AI acceleration in every core. This new family of processors promises significant leaps in AI and overall performance while lowering the total cost of ownership. Gelsinger showcased the breadth of Intel's AI footprint, which spans from cloud and enterprise servers to networks, volume clients, and ubiquitous edge environments. He reassured that Intel is on track with its ambitious plan to deliver five new process technology nodes in four years.

The Intel Core Ultra is a technological marvel, representing the largest architectural shift in the company in four decades. This processor launches the AI PC generation with innovation in multiple areas: CPU compute, graphics, power, battery life, and advanced AI features. The AI PC, as Gelsinger described, represents the most significant transformation of the PC experience in 20 years, since the advent of Intel Centrino which enabled laptops to connect to Wi-Fi from anywhere. The Core Ultra features Intel’s first client on-chip AI accelerator, the neural processing unit (NPU), enhancing power-efficient AI acceleration with 2.5x better power efficiency than the previous generation. With the world-class GPU and leadership CPU, the processor is adept at speeding up AI solutions.

Underlining the importance of software partnerships, Intel has collaborated with over 100 software vendors to introduce several hundred AI-boosted applications to the PC market. These applications, spanning creative, productive, and entertaining domains, are set to revolutionize the PC experience. Gelsinger remarked, “Our AI portfolio gets even stronger with today’s launch of Intel Core Ultra ushering in the age of the AI PC and AI-accelerated 5th Gen Xeon for the enterprise.”

The 5th Gen Intel Xeon processor family brings a significant leap in performance and efficiency. Compared with its predecessors, these processors deliver a 21% average gain in general compute performance and enable a 36% higher average performance per watt across a range of customer workloads. For customers adhering to a typical five-year refresh cycle, upgrading from older generations can reduce their TCO by up to 77%.

During the event, notable collaborations and achievements with the new processors were highlighted. IBM announced that 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors achieved up to 2.7x better query throughput on its Watsonx.data platform compared to previous-generation Xeon processors. Similarly, Google Cloud, planning to deploy 5th Gen Xeon next year, noted that Palo Alto Networks experienced a 2x performance boost in its threat detection deep learning models by using built-in acceleration in 4th Gen Xeon through Google Cloud. Indie game studio Gallium Studios leveraged Numenta’s AI platform running on Xeon processors to enhance inference performance by 6.5x over a GPU-based cloud instance, resulting in cost and latency savings in its AI-based game, Proxi.

The potential applications of these technologies extend beyond traditional computing environments. They can be envisioned in scenarios such as a restaurant personalizing menu choices based on individual dietary needs and budgets, a manufacturing floor identifying quality and safety issues at their source, ultrasounds detecting anomalies missed by human eyes, and a power grid managing electricity with precision.

Both the Intel Core Ultra and the 5th Gen Xeon are expected to find applications in unexpected places. Edge computing use cases, the fastest-growing segment in computing and projected to reach a $445 billion global market by the end of the decade, will especially benefit from these advancements. In this burgeoning market, edge and client devices are driving significantly more demand for inference than data centers.

To facilitate the adoption of AI hardware technologies, Intel focuses on integrating optimizations into popular AI frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow and offers foundational libraries through oneAPI for software portability and performance across diverse hardware types. Advanced developer tools like Intel’s oneAPI and OpenVINO toolkit assist developers in harnessing hardware acceleration for AI workloads and solutions, enabling rapid building, optimization, and deployment of AI models across various inference targets.

Concluding the event, Gelsinger offered a glimpse into the future with the Intel Gaudi3 AI Accelerator, scheduled for release next year. This next-generation AI accelerator is designed for deep learning and large-scale generative AI models. With the growing demand for generative AI solutions, Intel anticipates capturing a larger share of the accelerator market in 2024 with its suite of AI accelerators, led by Gaudi.

In essence, Intel's latest launch of Core Ultra and 5th Gen Xeon processors signifies a new chapter in AI technology, offering powerful, efficient, and accessible solutions across a wide array of platforms and industries. This technological advancement not only marks a leap forward but also opens up new possibilities for businesses and consumers to explore and benefit from AI in innovative ways.