A Closer Look At The Intel 28-Core CPU & The GIGABYTE System Running It

Lots of conflicting information floating around at the moment, regarding Intel’s latest publicity stunt centering around the mysterious 28 Core CPU running at 5GHz across all cores. While there is nothing fake about the product, there are a few things that need delving into to help clear the picture.

First of all, the system was clearly overclocked, and to quite an extreme degree, since there is no CPU on the market that will run 5GHz natively across all cores, especially not one built on 14nm+ architecture.

During the press event, most attendees couldn’t get a good glimpse at the two systems on show, so most attention was on the big screen and the Cinebench numbers on display, complete with the frequency chart to show that all cores were running at 5GHz.

There were two systems on display, one was the ASUS built ROG Dominus that’s had a few close-ups already, and the other was a GIGABYTE system using a prototype motherboard, called the SKL-SP 1S. This is most likely a placeholder name, since SKL-SP is the codename for Skylake Scalable Processors, or Xeons, and the Platinum 8180 we believe to be the base CPU, is classed as a Skylake CPU.

We can definitely confirm the board is an LGA3647 server socket, since the markings on the protective cover indicate so. The DIMM sockets are also labeled in pairs, sequentially from bank A to bank F (for a total of 6 channels).

There are 4x EPS 12v power cables on this particular board as well. The VRM is a little hard to figure out; we can potentially see 28 phases across the top of the board, plus another 3 for each set of DIMM slots, for 34 in total. We’re not sure if these are doublers, redundancy, or just extras for testing purposes. To further drill home this is a prototype board, there are also XDP connectors, Intel’s eXtended Debug Ports.

That’s about as much as we can gleam from the board that was laid out. The VRM cooler had been removed, which is what’s perched next to it.

Obviously, we can’t get details on the CPU either, as it’s just listed as an unknown CPU. However, we did get a shot of the benchmark in action, but weren’t allowed to do anything else with the system. You can see all 28 cores pegged at 5GHz, but Cinebench is only reporting the base clock of the chip, and not the active turbo.

The Xeon Platinum 8180 is a 205 Watt TDP chip, and we know that overclocking is pretty inefficient, so achieving such a high overclock would need some pretty extreme cooling.

During the live presentation, we saw that the system looked a bit odd, with all those huge pipes coming out of the back. At the time, we were wondering if it was some industrial water cooler, or some kind of phase change system. Even at the time, you could see insulation around the pipes, which was likely in place to prevent condensation, so we were confused.

Well, it’s both – an industrial water cooler and a phase change cooler, often called a chiller, and is used extensively in the Aquarium industry. Back at GIGABYTE’s hotel room, we saw what was hiding under the desk during the presentation, did some google-fu, and found a near identical chiller from Hailea, the HC-1000A (or B model). Interestingly, there are a number of similar looking models on Amazon too, if you want to have a look.

These circulate water through a refrigeration system to keep things at a cool temperature suitable for marine life, 5-10C typically, definitely well below ambient, which is why all the fixtures and fittings were covered in insulation and absorbent material.

We couldn’t get a number out of anyone, so we just don’t know how much power this chip needed to overclock so much, but considering other extreme overclocks in the past, and the kind of power they can draw, we have a conservative estimate of 500 Watts for such a large chip.

This is about as much info as we’ve been able to scrounge up for the time being, and haven’t been able to get a good look at the ASUS system just yet to compare, but there’s a good chance it’s a similar setup and the same general lack of specific information will be available – although ASUS at least has a name for its motherboard.