An Interview with Intel's Kira Boyko: Xeon 6+'s Product Director

Hello you fine Internet folks, today we have an interview with Kira Boyko, the Product Director of Intel Xeon 6+. Hope y’all enjoy!

Transcript below has been edited for conciseness:

George Cozma: Hello, you fine internet folks. We’re here at Computex 2026 at the Intel booth, or booth-room-floor area, whatever you want to...

Kira Boyko: Call it Intel space.

George Cozma: Yeah, well, whatever you want to call it. And I’m here with...

Kira Boyko: I’m Kira Boyko, and I am the product director for Intel Xeon 6+, which we have just launched at the event this week.

George Cozma: Now, starting off with a kind of simple question: what is a product director?

Kira Boyko: That is a good question. Actually, I get asked that somewhat frequently. A product director is someone who defines what the product is going to look like. So we look at the market requirements, what segments you want to target, how you want the product to perform, the different KPIs, and then you work all the way through to execution and delivery to make sure we are staying on track to our customers’ needs.

George Cozma: So are you actively saying, okay, this product needs to have at least X number of cores at X clock speed for X performance?

Kira Boyko: With X frequency, X application for this segment is going to need this KPI of performance. It needs to be able to support this and that, and this other part doesn’t matter. And then, working with our customers, of course, to answer those and understand their various applications, we build out models to ensure that we are supporting those appropriately.

George Cozma: Cool. And speaking of models, I assume you also are part of the SKU-ing, the people who decide what goes into, let’s say, the 6990...90+...E-Plus?...

Kira Boyko: 6990E+.

George Cozma: Okay, thank you.

Kira Boyko: Very confusing, yes.

George Cozma: And then, like, the SKUs down there, all the way down to the, I believe, the 6960E+.

Kira Boyko: Yes.

George Cozma: And so you determine what the gaps are and all that, or...?

Kira Boyko: Absolutely.

George Cozma: Okay. How are you doing all that? Are you just asking your customers what they want, or are you sort of just deciding through what can be cut down from different yields and whatnot?

Kira Boyko: It’s a combination of all the above. So it’s looking at all of our segments, understanding what those segments are going to need from an application perspective, and then determining how we best create SKUs to fit that. And then, of course, to your point, there is a lot of looking at the overall utilization to ensure that we are hitting our marks in terms of demand on a per-SKU basis.

But yeah, we try to keep it as simple as possible. Xeon 6+ has a simpler roadmap, which I’m particularly proud of, because Xeon honestly has a huge number. Yes. And we’re going to see a lot of crossover and application between some of our segments there, which is also going to help with the overall build and supply so that we have more material available for folks down the road to choose from.

George Cozma: Okay, excellent. And sort of, I guess, since you’re working with your customers, where in the design segment do you come in? Do you come in sort of as the product is being defined? So I guess before launch, how far back are you sort of involved?

Kira Boyko: Oh, years.

George Cozma: Okay, okay. So you’re sort of at the beginning.

Kira Boyko: Yes. Okay, yeah. The product manager actually starts out with the full product concept, or product kickoff, as well, right? So you start by saying, hey, this is what we need to deliver in this time frame. This is what we’re hearing from our customers. And then you start working with an architect and various other engineers to actually figure out how you’re going to build this and achieve it.

George Cozma: Okay. Now, sort of moving into Xeon 6+, the thing that really interested me the most was AET. Could you talk a little bit more about what that is, what the acronym is, and what that gives you over standard performance counters?

Kira Boyko: And we love a really good acronym. It is Intel Application Energy Telemetry, which you hopefully have, like, a sub-caption below this saying that, because...

George Cozma: I was like, when I first wrote it, I thought it was Advanced Energy Telemetry. I was like, wait...

Kira Boyko: I like that. I mean, sure, we can go with that too. I like that.

George Cozma: Should be XET. It didn’t just sort of fall into the everybody-has-an-X stuff.

Kira Boyko: That, and maybe a plus at the end, you know, just to make it super fun.

George Cozma: Or throw Ultra in the box as well.

Kira Boyko: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a new feature that we are introducing with 6+ that will be rolling out on all of our Xeons moving forward. So that’s important to know because, while 6+ is very focused on specific scalar workloads, we will have other CPUs, of course, that are focused on others, where this is going to be equally applicable. It is a feature that was highly requested by some of our customers.

So we developed that alongside feedback throughout the process. And it allows them to track, at a hardware core level, the actual energy usage of their workload as it’s moving from core to core. With that information, they can orchestrate differently so they’re using less energy. They can provide end-customer applications like visible chargeback to the actual energy utilized, or incentives with rebates to get them to utilize differently in order to reduce their energy consumption as well.

Previously, I believe there have been similar offerings that are on a software level, which adds additional tax and leaves space for misapplications, because it’s always different workloads that they’re tested on versus actually utilized by an end customer. So we’re really excited about this one. And it is available on all of our SKUs, which is great. And it works out of the box, so everyone can take advantage of it.

George Cozma: Cool. I assume it’s plumbed straight into perf?

Kira Boyko: Perf, from a metrics standpoint?

George Cozma: Yeah. Well, the performance counter suite, perf, in Linux.

Kira Boyko: Yes, yes, okay, yes. And it’s also compatible with all of our tools as well. Okay. So no additional work needed to be done to utilize that.

George Cozma: Are these hardware-level sensors, or is this like software modeling? So I know, for example, on laptops, instead of sometimes what you do is you actually just sort of model what the power should be instead of having an actual counter. Is this like hardware sensors embedded into the Xeon processor for this?

Kira Boyko: It is. It is a hardware-level hook into the core that allows tracking.

George Cozma: Okay. And then how, I guess, so Xeon 6 is you have effectively 72 clusters of four cores. How is it at the core level, or is it at the cluster level? Okay. Can you also get cluster-level monitoring as well?

Kira Boyko: I would have to check. I imagine that can certainly be viewed through it, but we’ll check and we’ll get back to you, okay.

George Cozma: Because, I’m sorry, zooming out from there, it’s not only do you have that cluster, you then have the whole SoC, you have the uncore and stuff. So I was asking if you could monitor the power of the entire system, sort of.

Kira Boyko: Oh, yes.

George Cozma: Okay. So all the way from the package level straight down into the single-core level. Okay, cool. It’s always great. You get more data points.

Kira Boyko: Yeah, yeah.

George Cozma: And more hardware sensors as well, also really fun to measure. What power differences can you get from an integer workload versus an FP workload and all that fun stuff? And you said moving forward, next-generation Xeons and continuing on will have this, are you thinking about potentially, I know this may not be your area, bringing that down into the consumer realm and sort of plumbing that into consumer devices as well?

Kira Boyko: Yeah, not my realm on the consumer side. But we do usually share information about our features that we’re building on the datacenter side to see if there’s application and use for clients.

George Cozma: Okay, awesome. Because I guess another question is, sort of continuing on that, how much do server and client talk to each other in terms of not just technology, but the sharing of different written knowledge?

Kira Boyko: Oh, quite a bit. Yeah, we’re very transparent. If they’re doing something super cool over there, we want to know if it can be applied to our space, and vice versa. We also have a lot of open dialogue around new features that we have coming out to support specific cores that are going to cross over. For example, 6+ is the first 18A Xeon. There’s also an 18A client that already launched.

George Cozma: Which just so happens to be in my bag.

Kira Boyko: Awesome. So we do a lot of cross-pollination to see where we can best leverage our resources and make sure that we are supporting the feature sets that are right for both of our audiences, as well as separately too.

George Cozma: Okay. I guess that leaves me with one final question, the most important question of this interview: what’s your favorite type of cheese?

Kira Boyko: I love blue cheese, specifically because I am a blue-cheese-stuffed-olive-in-a-martini person, so I’ll say that.

George Cozma: Blue cheese is not my personal favorite, but I have to respect people who enjoy it.

Kira Boyko: Are you going to share your [favorite cheese]?

George Cozma: It’s cheddar and my favorite as of late has been, because I just got it, somebody from Oregon just sent it to me, Tillamook 12-year cheddar. Oh, so good. But I have been getting into Manchego, so sheep’s cheese, so sheep’s milk cheese, which is a lot more sort of fatty, and...

Kira Boyko: Have you tried goat milk cheddar?

George Cozma: Cheddar? Yes, I have. Goat milk cheese, for me, is a bit hit or miss. It depends on how it’s been done. But I really like Humboldt Fog from Cypress Grove.

Kira Boyko: I know that one. Yep, delicious.

George Cozma: Yep, yep, I’m with you. Well, thank you so much for sitting down to interview sort of last minute. But thank you so much for watching. If you like interviews like this, hit like, hit subscribe. It does help, as much as it pains me to say it, to show the like and subscribe buttons. But if you would like a transcript of this, that will be on the Chips and Cheese Substack, along with links to our Patreon and PayPal. Thank you so much, folks. Have a good one.