You're right not to rush into running AMD, Intel's new manycore monster CPUs
Opinion Intel recently teased a 128-core Granite Rapids Xeon 6 processor, and your humble vulture thinks you can ignore them – indeed, ignoring them might be your safest course of action.
That’s because Intel, and AMD, will encourage you to put a lot of eggs in their manycore baskets. I’ve heard both argue that parts such as the 72-to-128-core 6900P processor family, the 144-core Sierra Forrest Xeon 6, a promised 288-core monster Xeon, and the imminent 192-core Turin Epyc offer the chance for a new round of server consolidation by packing more cores into a single machine.
The chipmakers suggest that replacing your current servers with machines running their monster silicon will free as much as half your rack space and slash your power bills. They are all but evoking a moment in which datacenter ops folk who put this new tech will bask in the glow of a job well done, a planet protected, and a bonus pocketed.
You don’t have to do this. And if you didn't want to do this, hold firm. Plenty of orgs have standardized on modest hardware and done just fine. But if the boss reads about the chance for a fresh wave of server consolidation in an airline magazine, have them consider a few items.
