A slide deck allegedly from an Intel presentation, has been leaked on Twitter (opens in new tab) exhibiting what seems to be the subsequent era of Xeon processors, Intel’s server and workstation merchandise. 

Of explicit curiosity is a slide titled “Granite Rapids-AP on Birch Stream-AP” that refers to a CPU with a whopping 120 cores, twice the quantity in Intel’s prime quality processor, the Xeon Platinum 8490H CPU, a $17,000 monster with 60 cores and a TDP of 350W.

These 120 cores will attain a TDP of 500W and would require a brand new socket known as BR with 7529 pins. The leak means that the cores used will probably be Redwood Cove “Efficiency” ones versus Environment friendly ones that may match one other product class known as Sierra Forrest. Each Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest are anticipated to launch after Emerald Rapids, the observe as much as the present Sapphire Rapids, scheduled for later this yr.

Too little, too late?

Xeon processors based mostly on Sierra Forest might find yourself having a a lot greater core depend as they’re less complicated, smaller cores geared in direction of energy effectivity moderately than absolute efficiency. 

After all, it’s doubtless that we are going to see Xeon CPUs that may mix each Efficiency and Environment friendly cores much like what’s being seen on the buyer desktop processor entrance. One slice exhibits 4 potential SKUs, one in every of which is prone to find yourself because the Xeon W for workstation PC.

Taking into account that the paperwork date from 2021 (assuming they’re actual) and will have been closely up to date since then, it’s all the time good to take these with a pinch of salt, particularly as these merchandise received’t seem till 2024, three years after the purported manufacturing of that presentation.

What is going to AMD do?

AMD has quite a lot of EPYC processors with 96 cores that had been launched in 2022 and 2023. We’ve identified since November 2021 {that a} 128-core product, a part of the Bergamo household, will come later this yr with a modified Zen four structure that maximizes core depend, providing as many threads as doable. 

Doing so will permit AMD to meet up with different extra area of interest gamers like Ampere Computing, which have been pushing high-core, low-power processors (such because the Ampere Altra Max) to hyperscalers and cloud computing companies. There’s in fact Amazon and its personal model Graviton CPU with 64 cores and in no obvious urge to extend the core counts.

Including extra cores comes with its personal set of points (energy dissipation and consumption, yield, numerous reminiscence bottlenecks and so forth) which interprets into diminishing returns. The newest EPYC CPUs use 350W for 96 cores or a bit lower than 3.7W per core. A finer manufacturing course of coupled with decrease velocity/higher IPC might slash that even additional and, mixed with a extra beneficiant TDP allocation in a brand new socket (say 500W), one can see a processor with 256 cores changing into a actuality.

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