The surge of generative artificial intelligence has brought hardware back into the conversation, with Nvidia Corp. becoming the most valuable publicly traded company in the world and Intel Corp. positioning its sixth generation of Xeon E-core processors. at the forefront. The product’s code name is “Sierra Forest,” referencing its potential to help companies with sustainability.

TheCUBE is at HPE Discover talking to the experts about Xeon E-core processors.

“It’s a seminal moment in the industry where we have this insatiable desire for power. It’s all about the race to how much compute can you fit into a square block of cement?” said Ryan Tabrah (pictured), vice president and general manager of Xeon E-Core products at Intel. “It’s really about power density. So, it’s not just perf per watt, it’s about power density. And what does it mean for customers? How can they use that to transform their next-generation data centers?”

Tabrah spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and John Furrier at HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the development of Intel’s Xeon E-core processors—the “E” stands for efficiency—and the future of AI hardware. (* Disclosure below.)

Xeon E-core processors offer long-term flexibility in adoption

Xeon E-Core has collaborated with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on DC-MHS, a new standard where companies can modularize server platforms, allowing them to customize servers and upgrade future iterations of a platform without having to replace the whole system.

“You can take now 66 of these [Xeon E-core processors] and replace those 200 servers and save a megawatt of power,” said Tabrah, who estimates the demand for AI has exacerbated the horsepower problem by a factor of 10 or 20. “And so, you can reuse that power, that space for growing your AI footprint. You can invest in other areas of your data center and it just unleashes the potential of your existing data centers or your future data centers.”

Intel also produces a P-core, or performance core, focused on large AI workloads, alongside the E-cores. The new chiplet designs give companies a lot of elasticity in choosing how many processors of each kind to have in a data center. Tabrah also teased the release of second-generation “Clearwater Forest” or Xeon 18A, the first processor in the Angstrom era, later this year.

“The chiplet technology allows you to intersperse and choose the right node for the right technology,” he said. “Workloads will drive the software. The software will drive how the data center’s built. The data center build will drive how the rack is built, which then we just have to have the products there that unleash all of these customers’ innovative ideas to use AI for awesome things.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of HPE Discover: 

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Intel Corp., the primary sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE