Intel Granite Rapids WS Core Scaling Performance With The Xeon 678X

Last week I provided a look at the Intel Xeon 600 series Hyper Threading performance with the Xeon 678X "Granite Rapids WS" processor for HT/SMT on and off. That was interesting while another reader request was to look at the CPU core scaling performance for this high-end workstation processor. Here are those benchmarks for showing the performance, power, and frequency/thermal impact of the Xeon 678X when limited to 6 cores, 12 cores, 24 cores, 48 cores, and then the 48 cores + HT default configuration. In wrapping up the HP Z4 G6i workstation tests prior to sending back the review unit for this Xeon 678X, this article provides a look at how the performance scales across varying workloads with 6 / 12 / 24 / 48 cores for this Granite Rapids workstation with Redwood Cove performance cores. The Xeon 678X 48-core / 96-thread processor has a 2.4GHz base frequency, 4.7GHz Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 frequency, and 4.9GHz maximum turbo frequency. The Xeon 678X is rated for a 300 Watt TDP. The Intel Xeon 678X within this HP Z4 G6i test system had 4 x 32GB DDR5-6400 memory and 2TB NVMe SSD while running Fedora 44 for these benchmarks with the Linux 7.1 kernel and GCC 16.1 compiler. Thanks to HP for having sent out this review unit for an interesting month of benchmarking Granite Rapids WS on Linux. While offlining the various cores and toggling SMT, in addition to looking at the raw performance was also monitoring the peak CPU frequency, CPU power consumption exposed via PowerCap/RAPL, the CPU core temperature, and ultimately the performance-per-Watt of the CPU.