Sierra Forest: Intel’s new data centre chip doubles power performance

Intel’s next-gen data centre chip will have 240% better performance per watt than its current generation. The chip, named Sierra Forest, will double the amount of computing work while using the same amount of power.

This is positive step forward in the data centre industry’s desperate attempts to reduce energy consumption.

During a semiconductor event at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, Intel revealed the Sierra Forest chip alongside another chip known as Granite Rapids.

Sierra Forest will be engineered for efficiency, focusing on better performance per watt, while Granite Rapids focuses on performance with a higher power consumption.

Ronak Singhal, Senior Fellow at Intel, said the greater chip performance can enable consolidation of older software onto fewer computers in a data centre.

“That density drives their total cost of ownership. The higher the density, the fewer systems they need,” added Singhal.

The Sierra Forest chip is expected to be released in 2024.

As the data centre chip market heats up, Intel recently lost market share to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Ampere Computing. NVIDIA was also achieved a $1 trillion valuation earlier this year, as a result of its AI chips for data centres.

Ampere Computing, a startup founded by ex-Intel executives, was the first company to go to market with a chip that focused on energy efficiency for cloud computing workloads. Intel and AMD swiftly followed suit by introducing comparable products.

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