Intel used extreme cooling and 1600W power for 28-core demo at 5GHz

For its Computex demonstration of a system with a 28-core processor running at 5GHz, Intel used extreme cooling and a 1600W power supply. The cooler is a water chiller with a capacity of 1 hp that can cool water to just above freezing point.

Both AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware gained insight into the system used after Intel’s presentation. From the descriptions of the websites it appears that the demo system was equipped with a Corsair AX1600i power supply and that the cooling was provided by a Hailea HC-1000B system.

The system consists of a motherboard with an lga3647 socket. That is the foot that Intel’s Xeon processors with many cores also use. Probably the chip that Intel showed is a modified Xeon Platinum 8180, which also has 28 cores and costs more than ten thousand euros. That model runs standard at 2.5GHz, has a maximum turbo of 3.8GHz and can clock all cores at a maximum of 3.2GHz at the same time.

Details about the used cooling and the chip appeared after Intel gave the presentation. The manufacturer itself did not reveal anything about the cooling method during the presentation and was also careful with other details about the chip. Intel only said that it will release a 28-core processor this year that can run at 5GHz. The manufacturer did not say that it was an overclock.

From the extreme cooling and power supply required to run the chip for a short time at this speed, it can be concluded that Intel will not release the chip itself with such a high clock speed. Perhaps the clock speed is higher than that of the Xeon Platinum 8180. That is a server processor and it is perhaps more conservatively tuned than what is possible.