Intel Xeon Platinum 8360Y 36c/72t 2.4GHz-3.5GHz 250W (CD8068904571901)

Intel Xeon Platinum 8360Y — High-Core-Count Ice Lake CPU for Large-Scale Virtualization, Analytics & HPC Workloads

The Intel Xeon Platinum 8360Y is a 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processor designed for enterprise workloads that demand strong multi-thread scalability, high memory bandwidth and reliable performance across complex distributed systems. With 36 cores, 72 threads and support for eight DDR4 memory channels, the 8360Y offers a significant throughput advantage compared to high-frequency Cooper Lake processors, making it suitable for multi-node compute clusters, heavy virtualization environments and workloads that benefit from broad parallelism rather than peak clock speeds.

A core strength of the 8360Y lies in its Ice Lake architecture, built on a 10 nm process. This generation introduces sizable IPC improvements, enhanced memory subsystem performance and expanded AVX-512 capabilities. As a result, the CPU handles dense multi-thread workloads with increased efficiency, particularly in large-scale data analytics, distributed databases and scientific computing frameworks where both compute density and memory bandwidth influence overall throughput.

The processor’s eight-channel DDR4-3200 memory configuration plays a crucial role in performance consistency. Many analytics engines, such as Spark, Presto, ClickHouse and Vertica, require sustained memory streaming and rapid data shuffling. Similarly, HPC applications — including structural mechanics, CFD, molecular dynamics and Monte-Carlo simulation — rely on large memory footprints and predictable latency. The 8360Y’s memory architecture makes it particularly suitable for these workloads.

PCIe 4.0 support significantly expands I/O capability compared to the preceding generation. This allows organizations to deploy next-generation NVMe storage, 200–400 GbE network adapters, accelerator cards and computational offload engines without bottlenecking system throughput. For enterprise clusters, this translates into smoother horizontal scaling and the ability to maintain performance predictability across mixed workloads.

The wider vector execution pipeline enabled by AVX-512 further enhances computational density. Machine-learning inference, numerical kernels, scientific solvers and encryption-heavy workloads benefit substantially from extended instruction sets and improved vector registers. In particular, simulation codes and algorithmic trading systems that leverage vector instructions see meaningful acceleration when moving to Ice Lake-based compute nodes.

The Xeon Platinum 8360Y is typically chosen for:

• Virtualization clusters with high VM density requirements
• Cloud orchestration platforms running Kubernetes, OpenStack or VMware
• Data analytics and distributed SQL engines with heavy concurrency
• HPC workloads needing balanced per-core speed and wide memory channels
• AI/ML inference pipelines deployed across multi-socket systems
• Financial modeling environments with large parallel compute graphs

Compared to the 8360H, the 8360Y trades some clock frequency for additional cores and memory bandwidth, resulting in higher throughput for workloads that scale well across many threads. It represents a strong balance between per-core performance, memory subsystem capabilities and compute density, making it a versatile choice for modern enterprise clusters.