Snow Ridge (Atom P5900 series) is based on the 10nm Atom Tremont architecture. It features up to 24 cores with a 2.2GHz base clock, up from 16 cores in the Atom C3000 series. Like Ice Lake and Haswell/Broadwell, it also features fully integrated voltage regulators (FIVR). Also like Ice Lake, it features a scalable coherent fabric for interconnecting the CPU and network accelerators. In the Nervana NNP-I, this was used to connect the CPU cores to the inferencing cores.

The Atom C3000 series is based on 14nm Goldmont, which was succeeded by Goldmont Plus. Intel claims Tremont improves IPC (instructions per cycle) by 30% compared to Goldmont Plus, and Goldmont Plus had a similar IPC increase compared to Goldmont, so the performance per clock has increased considerably. Intel claims 1.8x increased integer throughput.

But as it is aimed at the network infrastructure, it features a number of network acceleration technologies.

• New Dynamic Load Balancer with up to 3.7x packet-processing throughput versus software queue management
• 100Gbps QuickAssist Technology (5.6x vs. software, but unchanged compared to C3000)
• 440Gbps switching connectivity with 20 integrated Ethernet SerDes
• Integrated 100Gbps Ethernet 800 series: Intel claims 16% more throughput vs. an external NIC

Intel claims single-threaded packet-processing throughput is increased by 1.6x. For comparison, the first-generation C3000 CPUs had only 10Gbps Ethernet and 20Gbps QAT, at up to 32W TDP. Intel has not disclosed TDP of Snow Ridge, nor pricing. Read On: