Intel’s record-winning 56-core rig sucks as much power as a tumble dryer

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    Details have emerged in regards to the latest world file achieved by Elmor, an expert overclocker, utilizing Intel’s quickest single-socket processor, the Xeon W9-3495X, operating on Maxon’s in style 3D renderer, Cinebench R23, a staple throughout many workstation PCs

    It was cooled all the way down to -92.8 levels Celsius (-135 levels Fahrenheit) and boosted to five.5GHz – throughout all 56 cores – utilizing liquid nitrogen; a big improve as its base frequency is 1.7GHz (with the CPU consuming 350W) and a max turbo frequency of 4.8GHz (consuming 420W doing so).

    At its peak, your complete workstation drew nearly 1.9kW (which is about what a tumble dryer or a hairdryer pulls in) and required a pair of 1.6kW PSUs to feed it; we neither know the way a lot power the CPU drew on its own nor what the parts have been (which might have allowed us to make an inexpensive calculation).

    It did hit more than 132,000 factors, which was the world file. That train, although, as I highlighted in a separate article, is nice for the headlines nevertheless it doesn’t say a lot about actual life efficiency particularly because it doesn’t provide a transparent indication of what the efficiency of future CPU households can be.

    Raw clock speeds are usually an costly way – in terms of assets – to succeed in a sure efficiency stage which explains why even Intel is now resorting to so-called Performance and Efficient cores in its mainstream processors, one thing that Arm introduced 12 years in the past with the large.LITTLE paradigm. 

    Extreme cooling is right here to remain

    As for cooling with liquid nitrogen, whereas there’s no way this can change into mainstream amongst shoppers, there’s an enormous market for cooling techniques and coolants in the knowledge heart the place hyperscalers spend hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to maneuver extra warmth outdoors of servers and different infrastructure.

    Beyond the standard water cooling options in style with players and conventional overclockers, firms like Microsoft, Intel and Google are betting huge on one thing called liquid immersion cooling the place the server {hardware} is actually submerged in tanks of non-conductive fluid, in the same way to how an oil heater works.

    Smartphone distributors have also discovered revolutionary methods to dissipate warmth in a cheap and environment friendly way (keep in mind that they’ll’t afford followers). Solutions like vapor cooling techniques can’t sadly be scaled out for techniques that require more warmth to be evacuated.

    Via Tomshardware and HardwareLuxx 

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