Server CPUs: Intel drastically reduces the prices of the 4.5 TB Xeons

Anyone who previously wanted to use more than 1.5 TB of RAM in Intel server systems had to dig deep into their pockets: Because only the Xeon processors with M or L suffix can address 2 TB or even 4.5 GB proper surcharges. This has now come to an end, because Intel is using PCN to remove the M offshoots and lower the prices of the L models to their level.

According to the list price, the 28-core Xeon Platinum 8280L therefore only costs $ 13,000 instead of just under $ 18,000, which was previously the price of the Xeon Platinum 8280M. A regular Xeon Platinum 8280 is around $ 10,000. Smaller CPUs are also cheaper: the 18-core Xeon Gold 6240L drops from $ 10,300 to about $ 5,500 and the 10-core Xeon Silver 5215L from $ 9,100 to $ 4,200.

With the current Xeon Scalable Processors alias Cascade Lake SP Intel has so far differentiated three variants: the suffix-free chips can address up to 1.5 TB DDR4 RAM and the M variants up to 2 TB. The L branches also support the Optane DC Persistent Memory, a non-volatile phase memory with a higher capacity. Intel’s Cascade Lake SP has six memory channels, each of which can be equipped with one DDR4 and one Optane module. With six 128 GB DDR4 and six 512 GB Optane bars per socket, said 4.5 TB are possible with a Xeon-L.

The Xeons with a green label are also available as M and L versions. (Image: Intel)

AMD’s Epyc 7002 aka Rome have eight memory channels and can address 4 TB DDR4 memory if two 256 GB modules per channel (2DPC) are used. Such memory bars are very expensive, but in view of the previous Xeon-L prices they were worth considering. With the next server CPU platform, internally referred to as Whitley, Intel will also provide the processor families called Cooper Lake (14 nm) and Ice Lake (10 nm) with eight memory channels. It also supports Optane DC Persistent Memory with double capacity per DIMM.

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