Intel unveils 5th generation Xeon CPUs: 60+ cores? Extremely high performance!

Intel last night announced its roadmap for the 2023-2025 Xeon platform, which includes fifth-generation Emerald Rapids at the end of this year, Sierra Forest/Granite Rapids next year and Clearwater Forest the year after.

Of these, Emerald Rapids, which will be called the fifth generation of Xeon Scalable processors, is now out of prototype and in volume verification for on-time delivery in the fourth quarter of this year.

It will continue the current Intel 7 manufacturing process, P-core performance core architecture, Chiplet small chip package, LGA4677 interface, and will officially boast ultra-high core performance, higher power efficiency in the same power envelope, and continue to have integrated accelerators optimised for specific workloads.

Intel also showed live samples of Emerald Rapids chips, wafers, and you can see that the four small chips side-by-side on the current quad-generation Xeon (Sapphire Rapids) have become two.

It is clear that the number of cores integrated into a single chip of the new generation will be greatly increased, now only 15, four to reach 60 cores, and the next expected single chip can do at least 30 cores, or even more.

Sapphire Rapids

In the first half of next year, Sierra Forest will debut an E-core design with up to 144 cores and will also introduce the Intel 3 manufacturing process, LGA7529 package interface for the first time.

This will be followed by Granite Rapids, a P-core product with major engineering well underway and already in prototype form, with specifications supporting for the first time a DDR5 RDIMM memory technology called MCR (Multiplexed Consolidated Array) up to 8800MHz.

Further down the line, Clearwater Forest, the second generation of E-core products, will be upgraded to Intel's 18A process, which officials say will then overtake TSMC and regain its position as the most advanced process.