Intel Xeon 6780E / Xeon 6766E 144-Core Performance Benchmarks
First up was looking at the code compilation performance as the Xeon E cores are quite applicable here if wanting to build a high core count CI/CD server. When building a Linux x86_64 kernel with all modules, the Xeon 6780E came out slightly ahead of the AMD EPYC 9684X as the fastest processor otherwise -- both in single and dual socket configurations. The lower-TDP Xeon 6766E was just a few seconds slower and delivered comparable build speeds to the Xeon Platinum 8592+ Emerald Rapids processors.
When looking at the CPU power consumption for the Xeon 6700E processors is where it was quite exciting. The Xeon 6766E/6780E were consuming less power than the prior Xeon Platinum 8592+ (Emerald Rapids) and 8490H (Sapphire Rapids) flagship server processors: a single 6766E while compiling the kernel had a 201 Watt average while the 6780E had a 255 Watt average. Meanwhile the 8592+ had a 317 Watt average and the 8490H came in at 330 Watts... So there is indeed a very nice generational boost to power efficiency with the Xeon 6700E series. The Xeon 6766E/6780E power consumption was also lower than the AMD EPYC competition. The EPYC 9754 had a 262 Watt average with a 335 Watt peak compared to the Xeon 6780E having a 255 Watt average and 329 Watt peak. Or the EPYC 9684X as the fastest AMD CPU for this code compilation benchmark had a 348 Watt average and 413 Watt peak.
While the Xeon 6780E was the fastest processor for compiling the Linux kernel, for code compilation workloads it largely comes down to the codebase and the number of source files, the build system, and other factors for how well it will parallelize and if it can effectively scale up to 144 cores or 288 cores in the dual socket (2P) configuration. In the case of compiling Node.js, the Xeon 6788E performance was similar to the Xeon Platinum 8490H build speed but at least Sierra Forest was consuming much less power. The Xeon 6766E was consuming around 148 Watts and the eon 6780E around 170 Watts while the Xeon Platinum 8490H had been burning through 305 Watts on average! The Intel Xeon 6700E series does really deliver excellent gains in power efficiency.
With other code compilation workloads like compiling LLVM using the Ninja build system the Xeon 6780E 2P performance was similar to a single EPYC 9684X. But the power efficiency story remained: in this build test the dual Xeon 6780E processors consumed a combined 281 Watts on average compared to the single EPYC 9684X at a 289 Watt average.