Virtual server users love consistent, high-performance output from profile to profile at any given time, and for good reason. Reduced latency hiccups make managing applications and running development and test programs a lot less grueling. That’s why we’re pleased to announce that the beta program for 4^th Gen Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable processors on IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC is officially live. Customers can now preview one of the industry’s newest microarchitectures inside their own virtual private cloud—at no cost—and gain access to a host of core compute enhancements, including more memory per vCPU than ever available on IBM Cloud.

Is this beta program right for me?

Good question. Let’s break down some of your options and features. Your baseline would run on IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC. This is our developer-friendly platform with fast-provisioning, high network speeds and the most secure, software-defined resources available inside IBM. Your virtual server profile families would be hosted exclusively on 4^th Gen Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable processors (8474c), which we announced first on IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers just a few months ago.

It’s important to consider your workload performance requirements before entering this program. Check out the below. Your options are two pre-set, NUMA-aligned profile families (your amount of vCPU instances, RAM and bandwidth). Instances are booted with Open Virtual Machine Format (OVMF) and run in Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) mode for added security:

• Balanced profiles are for a mix of performance and scalability. They are ideal for more common workloads and come with a ratio of 1 vCPU for every 5 GiB of memory.
• Memory profiles are best for memory-intensive workloads, such as large caching and database applications or in-memory analytics. They come with a ratio of 10 GiB of Memory for every 1 vCPU of compute.

Consistent NUMA topology embedded into every profile option will give you a significantly consistent baseline experience. Each profile option also comes with 32.5 GB of high-performance, local, NVMe-based instance storage for easy access to temporary storage and swap space. Beyond instance storage, you’ll also get DDR-5 memory DIMMs and PCI Gen 5 if you need faster interconnects.

If you’re looking to test some of Intel’s newest accelerators on your heavier workloads, then you’re in luck because they’re integrated into the processor:  

• Intel^® Crypto Acceleration is designed to help reduce the penalty of pervasive data encryption and avoid overhead challenges from areas like SSL web servers, 5G and VPN/firewalls. You’ll need the latest Ubuntu or RHEL operating system. The accelerators will intelligently run when your workloads run into a need based on the crypto libraries.
• Intel^® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel^® AMX) is designed to improve the performance of training and inference—ideal for workloads like natural language processing, recommendation systems and image recognition. You’ll be able to take advantage of Intel^® AMX by using extensions from your favorite AI frameworks, like PyTorch and Tensorflow.

Overall, we think this beta program is a smart, no-cost entry point onto premium hardware for those looking to develop and test heavy application performance and investigate performance uplifts when porting to new platforms. The program is open for registration until September 25, 2023, and with it, you’ll get full access to IBM Cloud Support. After the beta program, your virtual server instances will need to be restarted into our production-level environment. Your billing will be initiated on October 1, 2023, by usage. 

Getting started

Do you have an IBM Cloud account? You’ll need one to establish your beta program participation. One you have an account, you can sign up by filling out a simple registration form that tells us about you and your workload requirements. From there, you’ll receive a formal acceptance email and be “allow-listed” with location deployment access. To speak directly with one of our beta onboarding managers, please reach out to Alise Spence or Chris Carter.

Learn more

Watch our on-demand webinar “Beta Bootcamp: The Ultimate Guide to IBM Cloud Virtual Servers for VPC with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors.” You can also discover getting started guides, tutorials and provisioning how-to’s inside our cloud docs.