Intel Xeon 6780E / Xeon 6766E 144-Core Performance Benchmarks
When taking the geometric mean of a few dozen benchmarks carried out across all of these processors, the Xeon 6780E 2P was around 5% faster than the Xeon Platinum 8592+ Emerald Rapids flagship. That's not surprising at all since the Xeon 6700E processors are really focused on delivering the best power efficiency and density. The Xeon 6700E is made up of all E cores without any P cores. When factoring in the actual CPU power consumption across the span of all the benchmarks is where the Xeon 6700E prospects get rather exciting:
👁 Intel Xeon 6 power consumption comparison
The Xeon 6780E 2P was delivering slightly better performance than the Xeon 8592+ 2P at... 70% the power consumption on average. The generational uplift in power efficiency with the Xeon 6700E is significant. Or if still relying on Ice Lake era infrastructure, the geo mean performance from the Xeon Platinum 8380 2P flagship to the Xeon 6780E was 1.896x the performance at 73% the CPU power consumption!
One Xeon 6766E was also about 5% faster than a single Xeon Platinum 8592+ while the Sierra Forest CPU was consuming just 55% the power of the prior Emerald Rapids flagship.
The dual Xeon 6780E configuration was at 85% the power consumption on average as AMD's flagship Bergamo processor, the EPYC 9754. Or in single socket configurations, the Xeon 6780E was around 66% the power consumption of one EPYC 9754.
Or put another way, the Xeon 6766E was averaging about 0.98 Watts per core and a peak of 1.88 Watts per core over all the benchmarks conducted. The Xeon 6780E had an average of 1.17 Watts per core and a peak of 2.47 Watts per core. Meanwhile the AMD EPYC 9754 had a 1.75 Watts per core and a peak of 3.1 Watts per core. The Xeon Platinum 8592+ Emerald Rapids CPU meanwhile equated to an average of 4 Watts per core and a peak of 6.3 Watts per core.
The power efficiency story of the Xeon 6700E series is a great one and allows Intel to regain competitiveness on that front and in a number of cases outperforming 4th Gen EPYC in performance-per-Watt for both Genoa(X) and Bergamo. The Xeon 6700E processors are targeted for cloud native applications, databases, micro-servers, some CI/CD deployments, and related tasks where E cores can compete sufficiently. For those more interested in HPC and AI workloads, it will be very interesting to see how the Intel Xeon 6900P Granite Rapids processors are competing in performance and power efficiency against AMD's current and upcoming EPYC processors. And then there's also AmpereOne that's long been promoted by Ampere Computing for cloud native workloads akin to the Xeon 6700E series focus albeit with hardware seemingly nowhere to be found outside of select large partners. With Ampere Computing still promoting Ampere Altra for said use-cases, an Ampere Altra vs. Xeon 6766E/6780E comparison will be coming as a follow-up article on Phoronix.
Looking ahead, the Intel Xeon 6900E series in Q1'2025 will be very interesting with up to 288 E cores per socket and 12 channel DDR5-6400 memory as well as eight additional PCIe 5.0 lanes. Further out is then Intel Clearwater Forest as the successor to Sierra Forest. Today's benchmarks show Sierra Forest regains power efficiency competitiveness with the competition but is a first-generation product while Clearwater Forest will succeed it with an 18A process and all the engineering goodies there for further advancing the power efficiency of all-E-core servers. But now with the complete Intel Xeon 6 line-up not being out until Q1'2025, I'd have to imagine that Clearwater Forest won't be out until late 2025 (Intel previously just indicated it's a "2025" product).
The Intel Xeon 6766E and Xeon 6780E performance benchmarks show Intel continuing to advance steadfast in the right direction -- just a half-year since the 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" launch and positioning for them to lead in power efficiency for dense deployments of micro-services, databases, and other cloud workloads. One area not briefed on is advance though is the pricing for these new Xeon 6700E processors. Looking ahead to next quarter is the Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" launch that should in turn be a real treat for those going after the best HPC/AI performance and other demanding workloads while it will be interesting to see how the timing plays out as well with AMD's 5th Gen EPYC launch coming up in H2.
Interesting times now and looking ahead with the ever-increasing compute needs across the world. Thanks to Intel for supplying the Xeon 6766E / 6780E processors and Xeon 6 reference server to be able to deliver these benchmarks today. Stay tuned for more Intel Xeon 6 benchmarks on Phoronix.
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