In fact, OEM manufacturers have already completed the transition to the use of Intel Scalable (Skylake-SP) processors. New features can be found in an Intel blog article . Here we will talk about the user approach in the choice of processors when ordering equipment.

As we are offered to make a choice:

comparison table

Intel Scalable processors are divided into 5 different groups, which have different purposes and pricing. Bronze is for the lowest-cost systems, Silver has the best price / performance ratio, Gold is required for high-end or 4-socket servers, and only Platinum supports 8-socket motherboards.

* Prices are from Intel site .

Other differences

Differences between families are not only in the number of cores and sockets. The same marketing alignment is performed on the maximum core frequency, supported memory and the operation of 512-bit FMA instructions.

Core frequency

• Bronze 1.7 GHz
• Silver 1.8-2.6 GHz
• Gold 51XX 1.9-3.6 GHz
• Gold 61XX 2.0-3.5 GHz
• Platinum 2.0-3.6 GHz

Max memory

Supported Memory Models

• Bronze DDR4-2133
• Silver DDR4-2400
• Gold 51XX DDR4-2400
• Gold 61XX DDR4-2666
• Platinum DDR4-2666

AVX-512 support

Number of FMA instructions executed at once

• Bronze one
• Silver one
• Gold 51XX one
• Gold 61XX two
• Platinum two

Observation results and conclusions

Restrictions in the memory or FMA instructions do not significantly affect the final performance as the number of cores, so when choosing, you can leave them outside the scope of the analysis.

Moreover, one can observe a double jump in the cost per core in the transition from Silver to Gold, so you should take the Silver 4116 processor (12C, 2.1GHz) as a threshold option. If it is not enough to solve the tasks, then in this case you will have to choose a processor from the more expensive group Gold 51XX.

This is with regard to conventional dual-processor platforms. If it is required to build a system of 4 processors, then only Gold 61XX (or platinum) is suitable for us, and for solutions based on 8 socket systems only the Platunum group remains.