Like Patrick at STH, I've been eagerly awaiting this product introduction since 2015's Xeon D-1500 launch, and 2018's watt-thirstier Xeon D-2100 launch, and it's finally happened, just ahead of Mobile World Congress, appropriately enough. Seven years of watching the proven benefits at the edge from an efficient, compact, and rugged design with integrated networking is finally getting new life and more use-cases at the edge than ever before. It seems likely this major product refresh will thrive in the market, but that's not to say that I don't have a concerns about its suitability for home lab enthusiasts, who were basically an accidental beneficiary of this movement of fast and efficient computing at the edge.
While it's not yet known for sure whether these will be on the VMware Compatibility Guide, that sure seems likely given the 7 years of ESXi support many systems based on Xeon D Series have enjoyed, including the owners of the popular Bundle. Note that Intel hasn't revealed pricing(Mar 10 Update - pricing here), and only time will tell how long it will really be before volume shipment availability. Meanwhile, we have some pretty darn impressive specs and new features to sift through here together, read onward.
Intel's table differs slightly from my Intel-ARK-based analysis of Intel ARK at left.
TinkerTry Exclusive Summary Comparison, using Intel ARK Compare:
Xeon D-1700 - 2 to 10 cores, 1.6 to 3.0 GHz (1.7 to 3.5 GHz Max Turbo) Frequency
Max 256GB 2667 MHz ECC DDR4 RAM in 2 Memory Channels, 15 MB Cache
Max 25 to 90 watt TDP
Xeon D-2700 - 4 to 20 cores, 1.8 to 2.4 GHz (2.8 to 3.5 GHz Max Turbo) Frequency
Max 1024GB 3200 MHz ECC DDR4 RAM in 4 Memory Channels, 30 MB Cache
Max 65 to 129 watt TDP
If you haven't read that yet, you really should, especially since some of what is covered there isn't repeated here.
Screenshot of STH's video indicates embargo details, and some very nice networking features including RDMA with iWARP and RoCE v2. Your vMotions could get more interesting!
Rumor no more, Xeon D-1700/2700 is now announced, and it turns out the specs I had heard about were pretty much spot-on. Special thanks to TinkerTry commenter under the pseudonym "IcelakeD" for bringing this major product launch to my attention within an hour of the 11am eastern embargo end time. I soon found that Patrick Kennedy from STH already had an enthusiastic article and video up, great content, watch or read it carefully.
What's not to love here: a faster bus & RAM, higher GHz, more cores, and overall Xeon D-1700/2700 power usage levels very similar to their predecessors, 2015's proven versatile Xeon D-1500/1600 and 2018's Xeon D-2100. This year of 2022 surely just got a whole lot brighter, and I can't wait to (hopefully) get my hands on some Xeon D-1700 goodness to test, including CPU torture tests with FLIR thermal imaging, along with watt burn and noise tests.
What’s New: Today, ahead of MWC Barcelona 2022, Intel launched new Intel® Xeon® D processors: the D-2700 and the D-1700. They are Intel’s newest system-on-chip (SoC) built for the software-defined network and edge, with integrated AI and crypto acceleration, built-in Ethernet, support for Intel® Time Coordinated Computing (Intel® TCC) and Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), and industrial-class reliability. New Intel Xeon D processors extend compute with acceleration beyond the core data center, generating a better overall experience for key network and edge usages and workloads.
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About New Intel Xeon D Processors: Two new additions to Intel’s networking and edge processor family, the Intel® Xeon® D-2700 and Intel® Xeon® D-1700, meet customers where they need compute the most: in space- and power-constrained ruggedized environments. They feature industrial-class reliability, multiple hardware-based security capabilities and up to 56 high-speed PCIe lanes to support high-bandwidth networks with up to 100Gb Ethernet. Intel® Xeon® D-1700 is scalable from 4 to 10 cores and the Intel Xeon D-2700 is scalable from 4 to 20 cores, delivering a broad platform family for customers to tailor solutions for the compute and performance they need.
The new Intel Xeon D processors feature:
Up to 4CH DDR4 with 3200 Hz.
Up to 100 GbE in the Ethernet throughput capability.
Up to 32/64 4.0 PCIe lanes.
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Built on Sunny Cove Core architecture
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The new processors bring generation-over-generation performance3 increases:
Up to 2.4 times improvement for visual processing inference.
Up to 1.7 times improvement for complex networking workloads like 5G UPF at the network edge.
Up to 1.5 times improvement for SD-WAN, SASE and edge use cases with IPSec.
Up to 1.8 times improvement for application delivery controller, and security appliance use cases with TLS.
Up to 1.56 times improvements for communication appliances.
Compute is racing to the edge, and Intel is there to meet it. At Mobile World Congress 2022, we introduced the Intel® Xeon® D-1700 and D-2700 family of processors, codenamed “Ice Lake D.” The Intel® Xeon® D-1700 and D-2700 family of processors are the next-generation system on a chip (SoC), built to deliver on today’s needs at the edge. These processors power solutions that will infuse your network and edge with the computing, ethernet connectivity, and security to handle the coming wave of demand at the edge. The Intel® Xeon® D-1700 and D-2700 family of processors enable scalability of software investment and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) with a durable, intelligent infrastructure.
The Most Innovative System-on-Chip Built for the Edge
The latest Intel® Xeon® D processor features a one-package design with built-in AI, security, advanced I/O and ethernet, plus dense compute to deliver high data throughput and address key edge requirements that your business demands.
Advanced Integrated Ethernet Connectivity
Integrated Ethernet provides up to 100 Gbps of throughput, with connectivity options that offer links from 1GbE to 100GbE. For storage networking, the SoC platform provides Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) for memory transfers between systems that bypass the operating system, increasing throughput and reducing processor overhead and latency. RDMA capabilities include support for both Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol (iWARP) and RoCEv2 (RDMA over Converged Enhanced Ethernet). This flexibility of transport protocols supports topologies of choice for storage architects.
Extended operating temperature ranges1 and industrial-class reliability make Intel Xeon D-1700 and D-2700 processors ideal for high-performance, soldered-down designs. They are suitable for rugged equipment, small form factors, and sealed fanless devices that must run nonstop in the toughest environments.
Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors.
Performance results are based on testing as of dates shown in configurations and may not reflect all publicly available updates. See configuration disclosure for details. No product or component can be absolutely secure.
I find that last sentence interesting. Note, all the performance tests seem to be with Ubuntu.
Search the Intel Marketplace for Xeon D-1700 or Xeon D-2700.
When I search it for the Xeon D-1700, I currently get just 3 industrial designs for results, with networking between 1GbE and 10GbE, and only 2 SO-DIMMs, which tends to mean pricey memory. Operating systems don't say VMware, but they do say Linux and Windows, and I also spotted USB 3.2,but not sure about that.
From what I have read so far, the Xeon D-1700 is definitely the Xeon D family member of the most interest to me personally. Those 8 core and below TDPs look like candidates for fanless designs too, which could be really amazing for folks whose home office doubles as a bedroom. The Xeon D-1700 is also looking to be less power hungry than any similar, upcoming AMD EPYC offerings, but I'd love to be wrong about that, competition and multi-sourcing is a good thing for the consumer and the health of this industry. I'm hoping supply chains holds up and Intel and AMD are both able to ship new single-socket efficient data center CPUs in large volumes this year, at price points that make sense. Fingers crossed!
Will Xeon D-1700/2700 be on the VMware VCG for VMware vSphere 7 / ESXi 7.0?
Will Xeon D-1700/2700 be on the VMware VCG for (future) VMware vSphere 8 / ESXi 8.0?
Will Xeon D-1700/2700 be on the VMware VCG for vSAN, as this chip is positioned for software-defined networking, not software defined storage. Then again, even though Xeon D-1500 was positioned similarly, my work on Xeon D-1500 contributed to Project nanoEDGE, a Xeon D-1500 based vSAN ReadyNode where I'm listed as one of several collaborators, see also nanoEDGE solution brief.
Ability to ship in volume, will the supply chains keep up?
Will lack of (consumer-focused) Thunderbolt 4 on all datacenter-focused Xeons like these affect suitability for home lab use in any meaningful way?
Unknown pricing, with everything going up lately, who knows how this will go.
Expensive memory? Maybe, I'm hoping that systems with 4 memory slots are available and of the generally more affordable DIMM variety. I'm less interested in the marketplace listings that only offer 2 SODIMM slots.
A little disappointing that PCIe 4 (aka PCIe 4.0) is what we get after such a long wait, with PCIe 5 (aka PCIe 5.0) coming fairly soon, but unlikely that's meaningful to home labs.
No Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory Supported.
256GB RAM max for Xeon D-1700, so might still be tight for some users who don't necessarily need or want the increased power (and watt burn) of Xeon D-2700, especially when using 24x7.
With Ethernet controllers built-in, stable networking at or beyond 10GbE is a must, with some Xeon D-1500 customers that use their Intel X552/X557 10GbE networking experiencing network drops that affected not just a few Supermicro customers, but there were similar reports about Dell and other OEM/ODMs featuring Xeon D-1500 too, with firmware updates only sometimes helping. Giving up a PCIe slot for different 10G NIC was a workaround, losing a lot of watts and efficiency in the process.
It's likely the Xeon D-1700/2700 are manufactured made by TSMC in Taiwan, and I don't know whether supply chain problems or world-events will affect volume shipments.
This is a little like a Xeon E, but with fast built-in networking.
This is a little like a Xeon W, but more for server use than workstation use.
This Xeon D-1700 is it's own thing, an SoC (System on Chip) design that allows for improved efficiency, while allowing for PCIe 4.0 (aka PCIe Gen 4) bus speeds for roughly double NVMe SSD speeds over PCIe 3.0. It offers up to 1TB of DDR4/2933 MHz RAM for those big home labs, and some SKUs expected to have 100GbE for very fast networking, lessening the need for multiple cables for some use cases. There's a range of 1.3GHz to 3.5GHz here too.
Finally, we've moved past the shackles of 14nm and onward to 10nm lithography, and it's about time.
Yes, I'm excited about this announcement, but it will be even better once I have assurance VMware runs great on it, without any special install tweaks or PSOD avoidance hacks. Even better, this single-socket solution for Edge use cases could very well come in handy for some of my day job's customers, so my first-hand learnings running Xeon D-1700 24x7 for my home's "production" workloads could come in handy there too. This is often one of the points of a home lab, isn't it?
For enthusiasts who enjoyed his article, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. Any amount helps greatly, especially given how difficult it has become to obtain revenue sources for the growth of this website and suite of hardware to test.
Feb 24 2022 - ServeTheHome - FINALLY! New Intel Xeon D. Hello Ice Lake-D!Intel Xeon D-1700/2700 Processor OverviewIntel's series of 3 videos including IoT Video Analytics, LeapMind Edge AI, and Wind River VxWorks
Originally, this article had this caveat near the top top:
Without advanced access to this major product launch, I needed some time to digest the wealth of information to provide TinkerTry's Take on these exciting new Sunny Cove core 10 nanometer chips that are looking* very *promising for virtualization home labs.
Briefly I had listed 100GbE capability, but that should have read 100GbE throughput capability, in the form of 4 x 25GbE. This has been corrected. Again my apologies, as I wasn't briefed by Intel in advance or after launch directly, nor have I had any success with reaching out to them directly.
Closing thoughts
Given the higher return rates for 1U Xeon D-1500 systems to Wiredzone these past 3 years, I still have no regrets to focusing my attention on the much more versatile mini-tower form factor Bundles, with far greater family acceptance factor and bang-for-your-buck than all similarly priced 1U variants. That's all detailed at TinkerTry.com/compare. That said, of course I've been keeping my eye out for appealing alternatives all along, seen here for example.
Realistically, I'll likely need to wait for Intel's long-awaited 10nm production finally gets going before I can possibly justify investing in new gear to keep, not just test.
Closing thoughts
Finally, my thoughts. I had frankly hoped a 3 year wait would result in a smaller than the 14nm design of the original Xeon D, but that just isn't happening quite yet. Perhaps pressure from AMD will accelerate the shrink soon, which would tend to result in even lower watt burn. Misses
Higher watts generally means louder fans, or larger chassis, or both
Larger CPU size may mean Mini ITX motherboard designs have no room for M.2 slots, example pictured here
I'm also skeptical whether DDR4 prices will fall far enough for the 512GB of memory maximum will ever be something obtainable in the home lab in the Xeon D-2100's lifespan.
On July 26, I learned from Wiredzone that they are no longer able to accept orders for the SuperServer Bundles due to a combination of logistics and profitability challenges that 2021 has posed. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience and frustration this may cause.
Welcome to the Intel Ice Lake D Era with the Xeon D-2700 and D-1700 series
Feb 24 2022 by Patrick Kennedy at STH
In this article and video, Patrick calls out the Supermicro SYS-E300-12D-4CN6P in the E300 chassis, along with the Supermicro SYS-110D-16C-FRN8TP in a 1U chassis. While those look promising, they're also likely to be too loud to be located anywhere near living spaces in most homes. I'd much prefer a mini 2U with lower speed fans, or even a mini tower that offers at least 4 M.2 slots, which could be quite awesome for VMware vSAN, both as a native node, or to host 4 clustered ESXi VMs, each with its own M.2 slot passed through (VT-d). Also for O-RAN (ORAN, Open RAN), read onward...
Near the end, Patrick concludes:
The Xeon D series is interesting. We saw platforms focusing on the 5G Open vRAN market as well as more traditional networking markets. Beyond these platforms, Xeon D gets used in many applications from control planes for switches to controls for airplanes. These products will be around for many years so getting new features is not just about what is available today, but also what will be needed in the future. That is why seeing big feature upgrades with this generation is very important.
Rakuten Mobile deployed the world's first open, fully virtualized cloud native infrastructure in Japan to deliver a reliable, flexible, scalable, secure and resilient mobile network for its partners and end customers. It has incorporated the new Intel Xeon D processor for optimal performance while meeting its specifications to design Symware, a compact, lightweight, self-cooling and weatherproof, containerized RAN solution, working in collaboration with Intel and Juniper. The solution is optimal for the densest urban environments in the world, and in this case, Tokyo, demonstrating the power of vRAN, built on Intel technology.
Intel says that over 70 companies plan to design servers around its Xeon D-1700 and Xeon D-2700 processors, including including Cisco, Juniper Networks and Rakuten Symphony.
Those deploying the Xeon D processors are not running applications that are bandwidth constrained as much as they are compute constrained and they also need to encrypt data in flight and at rest. To that end, the Sunny Cove core has lots of new cryptographic instructions as well as data compression instructions, which will be important for storage appliances as well as for 5G base stations, and of course there are AVX-512 vector math units with mixed precision integer support to do all kinds of things, including running AI inference out there at the edge.
The new Intel Xeon D chips are built on the company’s Ice Lake platform and feature integrated AI and crypto acceleration, built-in Ethernet and various other features that cater to common network and edge workloads.
Ahead of MWC 2022, Intel told TechRadar Pro and other media that the new chips deliver “breakthrough performance” across use cases such as security appliances, enterprise routers and switches, cloud storage, wireless networks, AI inference and edge servers.
if you attempt to boot ESXi on an Alder Lake CPU, it will actually PSOD (Purple Screen of Death)
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Before folks get too excited, I do have some slightly bad news to share if you are considering ESXi with the 10GbE option. The inbox Marvell driver for ESXi does not currently support this particular consumer 10GbE network adapter.
We’ll see the hypervisor running on all kinds of hardware in support of the edge. Nice read of how @IntelBusiness Xeon-D is a response to the use case.
After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop selling them in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. So far, Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh looking a little better for 2024. More cores, but still just PCIe Gen4 and DDR4. Looking ahead, I'm glad it's Pat Gelsinger at Intel's helm. I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when Pat was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.
