We’ve been talking about Intel’s Ponte Vecchio for over three years, including photos from the lab, but no one has actually seen the Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550 (based on a PVC design). There were hardly any. The reason is that this chip has been delayed many times and never delivered in server systems, but now things have changed and Intel says these 8-OAM systems will be available to customers in his July. I promise. At Computex, Supermicro decided to correct this mistake, demonstrating the X13 8U 8-Way Ponte Vecchio GPU system for AI and HPC as well as the compute GPU itself.
Intel’s Ponte Vecchio represents the pinnacle of processor complexity, boasting a die size of 2,330 mm² combined with over 100 billion transistors (excluding memory). The PVC design includes compute tiles, Rambo cache tiles, Xe Link tiles, and HBM2E memory stacks interconnected using Intel’s advanced packaging technologies such as Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) and Foveros47 A complex arrangement of individual tiles. PVC tiles are manufactured and assembled using a variety of process technologies.
Supermicro’s X13 8U 8-way Ponte Vecchio GPU server itself is based on two 4th Gen Xeon Scalable ‘Sapphire Rapids’ processors rated up to 350W, with 32 DIMM slots and up to 20 hot-swap 2.5-inch Connected. SSDs (12 NVMe, 8 SATA).
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But Intel’s Ponte Vecchio’s internals are very complex, but it looks very spartan in its OAM form factor with heat spreader. Considering the fact that this beast of 100 billion transistors has a TDP rating of 600W, it comes with a complex voltage regulation module that includes two high performance converters, each corresponding to a ‘half’ of a MOSFET. to increase the granularity of power supply. . In contrast, AMD’s Instinct MI250X uses just one high-performance converter onboard, despite being “only” rated at 550W TDP. On the other hand, an OAM slot can deliver up to 700W of power, so Intel’s modules were probably designed with headroom in mind.
600W is an extraordinary amount of power, so Supermicro’s SYS-821PV-TNR uses a giant radiator and high pressure fan to remove heat from Intel’s eight Data Center GPU Max 1550 processors. These radiators have seven copper heat pipes and dozens of aluminum fins, making even a PVC radiator a very complex configuration.
