Availability of Xeon E-2300 and compatible motherboards

[kivistik]

STH posted several reviews on the new Intel Xeon E-2300 series back in early September, along with newly launched ASRock Rack, Supermicro, and ASUS motherboards that work with the new LGA1200 socket.

I've been searching for these new CPUS and motherboards but all I have found are a few Supermicro motherboards on Newegg. I was wondering if anyone has any information on when these products would be available in the United States. I know a few people have asked about this in the comments of the STH reviews linked above.

My suspicion is that this is another consequence of the supply chain bottlenecks that have built up over the past several weeks, both on the West coast and East coast. Maybe someone who actually knows could confirm my speculation. Many thanks in advance!

 

[Stephan]

Bottlenecks for container freight, with two recent typhoons to deal with on top (100 ships waiting off Shenzhen and Hong Kong). Super high shipping costs right now.

2/3 of China factories only working 3-4 days a week now because of electricity rationing, after supplier of 1/4 of country's coal suffered a major flood. Orders in October will be delivered in January and Chinese new year break possibly be pulled forward in time.

Input costs in China rising as well due to shortages of parts and energy.

Buyers and possibly OEMs waiting for W-680/685 boards instead, which support Alder Lake with handsome performance increase.

Predecessor E-22xx series (Coffee Lake ER) doesn't have much less performance but much broader support from a range of available C246 boards.

Performance item #2: From E-22xx series onward Meltdown is fixed in hardware for the first time, cutting context switch time to like 1/10th of previous E-21xx and earlier generations' times.

There are entire manufacturing sectors right now rebalancing production away from close to 100% chinese sourced to more like only 50% chinese, with the other 50% going to Turkey, Spain, etc. I've seen reports on Twitter saying relocation is the difference between empty shelves and having something to sell AT ALL. It's that bad.

 

[kivistik]

Thanks, this is really helpful. I wasn't even aware of energy issues in China, nor of their own shipping bottlenecks. I think I will try to look for something from the E-2200 series instead of wait until what is likely next year.

 

[KarelG]

[...]
Buyers and possibly OEMs waiting for W-680/685 boards instead, which support Alder Lake with handsome performance increase.

Predecessor E-22xx series (Coffee Lake ER) doesn't have much less performance but much broader support from a range of available C246 boards.
[...]

Small correction here on otherwise very nice info. Perf gap between E-22xx and E-23xx is IMHO same as between E-23xx and future ADL W-14xx. You second name "handsome performance increase"' while first "doesn't have much less performance..." which is IMHO a bit misleading.

But otherwise I agree, E-23xx/W-13xx will probably be quite short-lived and with less support from the board makers.

 

[RolloZ170]

a Alder Lake Xeon with 16(or more) E-Cores would be nice, who needs P-Cores there.

 

[KarelG]

a Alder Lake Xeon with 16(or more) E-Cores would be nice, who needs P-Cores there.

It is indeed very good question which cores will be used by ADL Xeons. I'd bet that higher chance does have Golden Cove (performance core) here since I'm inclined to think that Intel will enable them together with AVX-512. I mean this for Xeon W-14xx line. I think Gracemont ( efficient core) makes more sense in future Xeon D(-like) network related product. However it looks like next gen Xeon D (just to be released in '21) is based on Ice Lake which would mean it will support AVX-512 and creating next version of the product on Gracemont without AVX-512 would effectively mean creating a product regression.

Anyway, due to limited amount of rumors about ADL-based Xeons I'm really curious what path Intel will go.