Intel Ice Lake-SP 24C/48T processor spotted on SiSoftware database, faces tough competition from AMD in terms of both price and performance

The 10nm Intel Ice Lake platform tops out at four cores and eight threads on the laptop side of things but server is a totally different ball game altogether. While we have seen a few Ice Lake Server listings in the past on the Geekbench benchmarking site, this is the first time we are seeing a 24-core 48-thread Ice Lake-SP show up on the SiSoftware database. 

According to the SiSoftware listing spotted by TUM_APISAK, the Ice Lake-SP part sports a 24-core 48-thread configuration that is clocked at 2.2 GHz, has 24x 1.5 MB L2 cache, and a 36 MB L3 cache. Though not evident from this particular listing, previous Geekbench leaks indicate that Ice Lake-SP can have a boost up to 2.9 GHz. In those Geekbench leaks we also get to know the Northbridge ID as Intel ID09A2, which points to Intel Whitley in the CPU-Z validator.

Ice Lake-SP belongs to the Whitley platform, which is an upgrade from the Skylake-based Purley generation. Ice Lake-SP can be expected to cater to workstation Xeons and possibly even HEDT with its contemporary Cooper Lake-SP likely to be targeted at scalable Xeon high-performance systems. Intel Whitley will also see the arrival of PCIe Gen4 and DDR4-3200 RAM support — a first for any Intel platform.

While it is good to see Intel finally transitioning to 10nm on the HEDT/server side, AMD has already made its mark with EPYC Rome 7742 that offers up to 64 cores and 128 threads for server not to forget the Threadripper 3990X that offers the same core count with higher clocks for the HEDT market.

That being said, the Intel 24C/48T Ice Lake-SP CPU is almost on par with an AMD EPYC 7402P in Geekbench 4 multi-core, which is also a 24C/48T part. The EPYC 7402P does manage to have ~10% lead in single-core test, though.

Although Epyc does not support as many sockets as Xeon does (2 vs 8) AMD does have a cost advantage owing to its chiplet design. With Zen 3-based EPYC Milan slated to launch later this year, it looks like Intel will have to offer an enticing cost incentive to ensure that Ice Lake-SP manages to have a decent marketshare.