Smaller servers are taking over data centers, but Intel believes the future is also bright for powerful big-iron servers, thanks to companies’ embrace of machine learning, which requires a lot of horsepower to process complex algorithms and large data sets.

With its new top-line Xeon E7 v3 server chips based on the Haswell microarchitecture, Intel hopes to capitalize on the demand for this type of server. With up to 18 CPU cores, the chips are Intel’s fastest, and designed for databases, ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems and analytics related to machine learning.

Complex machine learning models can’t be distributed over the cloud or a set of smaller hyperscale servers in a data center. Instead, a more powerful cluster of servers is needed to run deep-learning systems, where the larger number of cores could power more precise analysis of oceans of data.

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