英持尔推新数据中心芯片，反击英伟达与AMD围剿

上周二，英特尔推出了一款全新的面向企业服务器和云数据中心的微处理器芯片，据称其性能比此前预期的还有较大提升。

作为芯片业务的老牌龙头，近年来英特尔在利润丰厚的服务器芯片业务上也遭到了多家竞争厂商的围剿。英特尔表示，它的Xeon Scalable处理器运行普通服务器任务的速度平均是上一代处理器的1.65倍。为了提高硬件速度，英特尔还对芯片软件进行了一些调整。但该芯片的性能跃升幅度是否真有这么大，还有待于外部专家的确认。不过据华尔街和业内人士预计，Xeon Scalable处理器的性能确实有相当不错的提升，只不过其幅度没有英特尔自家爆料的那么夸张。

英特尔数据中心集团副总裁丽莎·斯佩尔曼在上周二的发布会前对《财富》表示：“它代表了我们20年数据中心创新史的最高水平。”她表示，上一代的该型芯片是去年三月才推出的。“这是相当了不起的，这将继续为我们的客户带来性能上的突破。”

不过从上周二英特尔发布会上几家客户企业的发言来看，此次发布的新芯片带来的性能提升或许并没有那么大。比如AT&T公司首席战略官约翰·多诺万就指出，在使用了新一代Xeon芯片后，他们公司的系统性能大约提升了30%。

英特尔在企业服务器芯片和云数据中心芯片市场上的占有率超过了90%，但它面临的竞争依然是十分激烈的。英特尔CEO布莱恩·克兰尼克曾表示，哪怕以牺牲利润率为代价，也要更快地改进服务器芯片的性能。

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随着人工智能和机器学习技术越发流行，英伟达也研制出了更适合这些技术的图形处理芯片。上个月，超微半导体公司也推出了一款兼容英特尔硬件的芯片，取名为Epyc。据说它不仅性能更出色，而且还具备节能和节省成本等优点。而有些自行运营数据中心的科技企业（如谷歌）也在研制自家的定制芯片。

在多家竞争对手的重重围剿下，投资人们也开始感到担心了，尤其是今年第一季度，英特尔服务器芯片业务的收益增长额仅为6%。上周一，杰富瑞集团分析师马克·里帕希斯对英特尔股票给出了“卖出”评级。他指出：“作为一家市场份额占主导地位的老牌企业，我们认为（英特尔）是最有可能走下坡路的。”

英特尔的股价今年以来已经下跌了7%。上周二英特尔发布新款Xeon芯片后，其股价基本没有变化。而英特尔的主要竞争对手英伟达的股票今年已累计上涨了44%，Xeon芯片的发布并未对英伟达股价产生任何影响。超微的股票则上涨了1%，从年初至今，超微股价已累计上涨了22%。

性能更快

英特尔表示，其新芯片的性能之所以提高如此之多，部分原因是由于在每个芯片的不同组件之间增添了更多的快速连接功能——比如在处理核心和存储器上。这种新型的“网状架构”与超微的“无限连接”架构也颇有异曲同工之妙。

虽然英特尔直到上周二才正式推出了Xeon芯片，但是在此之前，它已经将大约50万颗左右的该款芯片卖给了谷歌等一些大客户，并允许多家企业就该芯片的性能进行测试。在上周二于纽约市举办的一场活动上，有一些试用了这款新芯片的企业进行了“现身说法“。其中甲骨文的12c数据库的性能提高了1.3倍，百度搜索引擎的性能提高了1.7倍，爱立信的视频编码速度提高了1.5倍。所有这些性能的提高既要归功于这些新芯片，也要归功于相关的软件升级。

尽管英特尔并未得到最新的超微Epyc芯片，不过英特尔表示，在超微公司上个月披露的性能测试中，英特尔新款Xeon Scalable芯片的某个版本至少与Epyc芯片的性能相当，甚至更强。超微曾表示将提供Epyc芯片的单槽产品，这相对于英特尔的双槽芯片有较大的成本优势。

英特尔表示，它并不认为超微的单槽芯片能完全满足任务需求。斯佩尔曼表示：“他们之所以如此不遗余力地拿单槽做文章，并非由于单槽最符合客户的利益，也并非由于它能满足数据中心的所有需求，而是因为它在基准性能测试中能取得一个好成绩。”

面对英伟达在显卡上的咄咄逼人，英特尔近来已经不再打嘴炮了。超微最近也推出了一款性能更强悍的Vega显卡。Xeon芯片虽然可以较好地执行一些人工智能领域的任务，但对于如何有力回击显卡领域的挑战者，英特尔似乎尚未给出最终的答案。目前英特尔正在整合消化它去年收购的一家创立仅两年的人工智能芯片创业公司Nervana Systems的技术，以研发一款名叫Lake Crest的新芯片。

斯佩尔曼表示：“英特尔正在投资研发性能更加优化的芯片。”(财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

Intel introduced a new line of microprocessor chips for corporate servers and cloud data centers on Tuesday, with a larger claimed boost in performance than expected.

Under siege on all sides in its lucrative server chip business, Intel said its new Xeon Scalable processors were 1.65 times as fast on average as its prior generation at common tasks run by servers. The huge jump included tweaks to software specially designed to speed up tasks with Intel's chips and will have to be confirmed by outside experts. But Wall Street and the industry had been anticipating a more modest performance increase.

"This represents the best of our 20-year history of data center innovation," Lisa Spelman, vice president of Intel's data center group, told Fortune ahead of last Tuesday's presentation, noting that the prior chip generation just came out in March last year. "That's huge. That's a lot to continue to deliver on the performance beat rate to our customers."

Several customers speaking at Intel's event on last Tuesday disclosed more modest improvements. AT&T chief strategy officer John Donovan said the telecommunications giant had seen a 30% performance increase after deploying new Xeon chips.

Still, Intel's over 90% share of chips sold in computers that run corporate servers and cloud data centers remains under fierce attack. CEO Brian Krzanich has committed to improve server chips more quickly than in the past, though at the expense of profit margins.

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But Nvidia is pitching its graphics processing cards as a better solution for running the kinds of artificial intelligence and machine learning tasks that are becoming increasingly popular. And Advanced Micro Devices last month launched a line of Intel-compatible chips called Epyc that it said provided better performance while saving energy and costing less. Some data centers owners like Google are working on making their own custom chips, as well.

Investors have been growing increasingly concerned about the challenges, particularly after Intel reported a revenue increase of only 6% for its server chip business in the first quarter. On last  Monday, Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis slapped a "sell" rating on Intel's stock. "As the incumbent with dominant share, we think (Intel) has the most to lose," Lipacis wrote.

Shares of Intel, which were down 7% so far this year, were about unchanged on  last Tuesday after Intel unveiled the new Xeons. Shares of competitor Nvidia, which have gained 44% so far this year, were also about unchanged and shares of AMD, up 22% in 2017, rose 1%.

Faster Performance

Intel said its new chips increased performance in part by adding more fast connections between different components on each chip, such as the processing cores and the memory storage. The new "mesh architecture" sounded a lot like AMD's "infinity fabric" that it touted in the Epyc chip along similar lines.

Although Intel was formally introducing the new Xeon chips on last Tuesday, it has already sold about 500,000 to some large customers such as Google and allowed many more to benchmark the performance of the chips. At an event in New York on last Tuesday, Intel planned to report some of the customer benchmarks, including that Oracle saw 1.3 times faster performance running its 12c database, Baidu saw 1.7 times faster search performance, and Ericsson speeded up video encoding by 1.5 times. All of the improvements included the impact of both the new chips as well as software tweaks related to the chips.

And although Intel did not have access to AMD's new Epyc chips, the company said comparable versions of its new Xeon Scalable line matched or beat the performance of Epyc chips on the benchmarks tests that AMD revealed last month. AMD has said it will offer single chip packages, known as a one-socket product, that will serve the needs of many customers who have been buying double chip, or two socket products, from Intel, potentially generating big cost savings.

Intel says it doesn't think the AMD one-socket chips will be up to the task. "They may be pushing that one-socket conversation so hard not because it's in the best interests of their customers or because one-socket solutions address all data center needs, but because they've achieved a good result on a benchmark," Spelman said.

The company has been less chatty about the challenge posed by graphics chips from Nvidia and AMD is launching a new line of souped up graphics chips dubbed Vega shortly, as well). The Xeon chip can do some AI tasks well, but Intel's more direct answer to the graphics chip challengers is still in the works. The company is integrating technology it acquired buying two-year-old AI chip startup Nervana Systems last year for a new line of chips dubbed Lake Crest.

"Intel is investing in much more optimized silicon," Spelman says.