Intel talks a bit more about Omnipath ‘tech’

And by a bit more, we mean a very small bit

Jul 13, 2015 by

Intel Xeon Phi LogoIntel once again ‘released’ their Omnipath ‘tech’ for the third or so time, again sans details. It is getting boring kicking them for such things so lets just dive in and be snide throughout in SemiAccurate’s usual ‘style’.

To start out on a bright note we have a second Omnipath ‘release’ without a pointless name change, something we think is a record for the company. Moving on from that high we can honestly say that they released much more information about the product than last time but the bar was set pretty low. Really low. It couldn’t get lower. Actually yes it could.

Moving back to rainbows and unicorns, Intel did actually get technical about the Knights Landing CPU a few months ago, see here for more. We were expecting a similar level of tech for Omniwhatever but boy were we disappointed. That said it supports 195M messages/sec/port and Intel claims it is up to 73% faster than Infiniband EDR with lower latency. That would be a claimed 100-110ns or so along with some enhanced data integrity features. It all sounds good eh?

The problem is that we don’t believe the tech is very good, numbers are fine but refusing to answer questions or go over the tech time and time again for a product line is all you need to know. Intel claims it is sampling, has a large market ‘opportunity’, but that is about it. Rainbows and unicorns but no actual information, just misdirection aimed at the financial set.

This isn’t to say that SemiAccurate thinks it will be a dud in the market, it will sell pretty well. Why? Because Intel is building it into their Knights Landing and presumably other future parts, it is on die. If you buy one of these CPUs you are pretty much locked into an Intel fabric because that is all that will be supported. This reminds me of another technology with a code name of FTC or something like that.

In short it looks like Intel has another dog on their hands. They are again playing the classic game of ‘hide the turkey’ while trying to get the press to repeat the glorious highs of the ‘tech’ and it’s ‘class leading’ features’ they won’t tell you about. It is being force bundled onto their CPUs so it will succeed in the market, but not likely because it is a good technology. On the up side they did disclose vastly more on it this time around, so I think we are making progress. That and they finally admitted that Knights Landing has 72 cores.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate