Intel to release 72-core Xeon Phi accelerator in early 2016

The first systems with Intel’s Knights Landing Xeon Phi accelerator will be available in Q1 2016. The manufacturer announced this during the introduction of Intel’s Scalable System Framework for high performance computing.

Intel is currently preparing to launch the Knights Landing Xeon Phi card and is now rolling out with the first partners, including Cray, pre-production models of the accelerator, the company announced. The successor to Knights Corner is produced at 14nm, contains 72 cores and is provided with 16GB multi-channel dram. This type of memory could achieve a throughput of 400GB/s. Knights Landing also has support for 36 pci-e 3.0 lanes and for the Omni-Path Architecture.

This architecture is part of Intel’s Scalable System Framework for high performance computing. Omni-Path is Intel’s attempt to provide an alternative to InfiniBand with low latency and high bandwidth. InfiniBand has had its day, Intel claims, and Omni-Path should be better prepared for the future with its 100Gbit/s bandwidth and latency of 100 to 110ns per port. Intel introduces a 48-port switch chip as the foundation for the Omni-Path architecture. With InfiniBand, the maximum would be 36 ports. Cray, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo and SuperMicro, among others, already use the Omni-Path Architecture.