Intel Data-Centric Innovation Summit Cascade Lake Optane and More

Intel Cloud Growth

Intel has gone from 35% market share in the cloud years ago to a huge position now. This growth has been driving at 43% CAGR and has become the big driver of Data Center Group growth.

Today, 50% of SKUs are optimizing moving towards custom. Sandy Bridge with Google was the first customized SKU. Intel is using AWS touting the custom SKUs that Intel has been delivering for AWS.

Not a surprise for STH readers, but this was perhaps the first confirmation that Xeon D was a custom joint development with Facebook.

Semi-custom parts for the Intel cloud customer base. They can deliver custom ASICs, Intel IP, 3rd party IP and scale up and down features in SKUs for customers.

Intel Enterprise Market Update and Outlook

Intel wanted to talk about the cloud. From 2014 to 2017 the company called the enterprise market a “bear era.” CIOs were moving workloads to the public cloud.

As a result, of the company’s investments during this bear era, it is starting to see trends. These trends include:

• 12% private cloud adoption
• 80% of companies reporting cloud repatriation activities
• Twice as many CPUs being used for AI and analytics today than three years ago.

Intel claims that it is starting to see a strong Enterprise uptake and growth for the first time in years.

Part of this growth is due to the ramp of Skylake generation CPUs. Intel claims taht through the first half of the year Skylake is now over 50% of CPU shipments in the “Enterprise” segment. This likely includes embedded and other markets.

Intel Optane Persistent Memory

We know that part of the announcement today will be around Intel Optane Persistent Memory. If you want to read more about that technology:

• Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory Sampling Today Revenue Delivery 2018
• Next-Gen Intel Cascade Lake 28C Supporting 3.84TB Memory

More on this as the event continues. STH’s linked article above derived 3.84TB memory capacity being possible on Cascade Lake. Intel confirmed that Cascade Lake will support over 3TB in its presentation.

We are going to be hearing more on this later today.

Intel Networking Update

Intel is pushing aggressively into the networking segment. The company sees the 5G and network convergence space as a major opportunity. As traditional single function hardware is replaced with 5G architecture, telecoms are investing in virtualized infrastructure.

Intel has a number of processor lines including the Intel Xeon D-1500, Xeon D-2100, and Atom C3000 series that are built for the networking market, in addition to the standard server CPUs. Beyond CPUs, Intel is pushing other portfolio products such as FPGAs and NICs into the space. The company announced today that it is coming out with a Smart NIC to address its customer demand.

Intel says it is pushing this space because the market TAM is growing.

In this growing market, Intel attributes 22%+ CAGR to the market as it thinks that it is growing in market share.

In the industry, the 5G transition is going to be huge in the industry. Beyond just Intel, traditional server and networking companies are all tagging this as a major technology transition that will make new winners and losers in the market.

Intel FPGA Update

Later this morning and again this afternoon we expect to have an update on the Intel FPGA space, powered by the company’s Altera acquisition. FPGAs are becoming big business as hyper-scale data center clients have been picking up the technology for AI inferencing.

Intel Silicon Photonics Update

This afternoon we will learn more about the Intel Silicon Photonics product. Intel is investing in this space as it sees the technology being the holy grail leading to true disaggregation.

Keep checking this throughout the day as we will be posting more from the event.