5.4 Ivytown: A 22nm 15-core enterprise Xeon® processor family

The next-generation enterprise Xeon^® server processor has 15 dual-threaded 64b Ivybridge cores [1] and 37.5MB shared L3 cache. The system interface includes two on-chip memory controllers, each with two memory channels and supports multiple system topologies. The processor has 4.31B transistors in a high-κ metal-gate tri-gate 22nm CMOS technology with 9 metal layers [2]. The design supports a wide array of product offerings with thermal design power ranging from 40 to 150W and frequencies ranging from 1.4 to 3.8GHz. Fig. 5.4.1(a) shows the processor block diagram. The floorplan (Fig. 5.4.1(b)) is driven by the ring bus routability and latency, as well as the chop requirements to smaller core counts. The cores and associated L3 cache are organized in columns of five, with the ring bus segment embedded. The fully populated die has 15-cores in three columns. The 10-core chop removes the rightmost 3^rd column and its dedicated top and bottom IOs. CMOS muxes embedded in the ring bus are programmably operable in a 2-or-3-columns configuration. The 6-core chop removes the 2^nd and 4^th rows from the 10-core die.