This week at the Data-Centric Innovation Summit, Intel laid out their near-term Xeon roadmap and plans to augment their AVX-512 instruction set to boost machine learning performance.
Artificial intelligence is delivering powerful insights and capabilities across many industries. But these workloads require significant compute performance and optimizations to provide timely, more precise results. Current Intel Xeon Scalable Processors are built specifically for the flexibility to run complex AI workloads on the same hardware as your existing workloads. And future Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, codename: Cascade Lake, take embedded AI performance to the next level with Intel deep learning boost, which extends the Intel AVX-512 instruction set with Intel inference boost to significantly accelerate inference performance for deep learning workloads optimized to use a vector neural network instruction. Examples of these targeted workloads include image classification, speech recognition, language translation, object detection and more.
This dramatic performance improvement and efficiency – up to twice as fast as the current generation – is delivered by using a single instruction to handle INT8 convolutions for deep learning inference workloads which required three separate AVX-512 instructions in previous generation processors. Developers can create applications that can take advantage of Intel deep learning boost through available optimized frameworks and libraries. Intel and it’s ever-growing ecosystem will continue to optimize these and other popular frameworks and libraries to further accelerate inference performance on the latest Intel Xeon Scalable Processors up to three times faster than the current generation with FP32 instructions. Accelerate inference performance for your deep learning workloads within Intel Xeon Scalable Processors featuring Intel deep learning boost.
At the event, Intel also disclosed the next generation roadmap for the Intel Xeon platform:
- Cascade Lake is a future Intel Xeon Scalable processor based on 14nm technology that will introduce Intel Optane DC persistent memory and a set of new AI features called Intel DL Boost. This embedded AI accelerator will speed deep learning inference workloads, with an expected 11 times faster image recognition than the current generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors when they launched in July 2017. Cascade Lake is targeted to begin shipping late this year.
- Cooper Lake is a future Intel Xeon Scalable processor that is based on 14nm technology. Cooper Lake will introduce a new generation platform with significant performance improvements, new I/O features, new Intel DL Boost capabilities (Bfloat16) that improve AI/deep learning training performance, and additional Intel Optane DC persistent memory innovations. Cooper Lake is targeted for 2019 shipments.
- Ice Lake is a future Intel Xeon Scalable processor based on 10nm technology that shares a common platform with Cooper Lake and is planned as a fast follow-on targeted for 2020 shipments.
Download the whitepaper: Lower Numerical Precision Deep Learning Inference and Training
