Intel Clearwater Forest E-Core Only Xeon CPUs To Offer Up To 288 Cores: Updated Skymont Cores With Higher IPC, More Cache

Intel's 2nd Gen E-Core Only Xeon CPUs, codenamed Clearwater Forest, are expected to feature up to 288 cores with updated architecture.

The latest information comes from Bionic_Squash who keeps the tab on the latest developments on Intel's upcoming chips. According to the newest post, it looks like we are getting an early taste of what to expect from Intel's 2nd Gen Xeon family based on the E-Core CPU architecture. The first E-Core-only family, codenamed Sierra Forest, is yet to launch with a planned release for mid-2024 so based on how early this information is, things could change as we get closer to the 2025 launch of Clearwater Forest.

Core count comparison:SRF-SP < CWF-SPSRF-AP = CWF-AP

— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) December 1, 2023

With that said, it looks like Intel's Clearwater Forest will utilize an updated version of the Skymont E-Core architecture. This would be the fifth Gen E-Core architecture with Gracemonth being the first which made its debut on Alder Lake and was later reused in Raptor Lake CPUs, Crestmont which is going to debut in the upcoming Meteor Lake CPUs, and Sierra Glen which will debut with Sierra Forest chips.

As for Sierra Glen (for Sierra Forest), the E-Core architecture feels a lot similar to Crestmont with slight modifications which itself is very similar to Gracemont with some changes here and there as explained in this article. In Clearwater Forest, we will see an optimized version of Skymont cores from the looks of it. This is the same E-Core CPU architecture that will be utilized by Lunar Lake and Panther Lake by 2025.

The cores in SRF are slightly modified version of Crestmont

— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) December 1, 2023

IPC uplift should be pretty decent, there's also pretty big L3 cache increase on CWF

— Bionic_Squash (@SquashBionic) December 1, 2023

The Clearwater Forest Xeon CPUs utilizing the Skymont architecture are said to offer up to 288 cores which is the exact same (Max) core count as the Sierra Forest chips. The difference is that the Clearwater Forest-SP chips will offer more cores than Sierra Forest-SP (144 cores) while the Clearwater Forest-AP chips will peak out at the same 288 core count as Sierra Forest-AP. The IPC is also said to receive a decent uplift and one major improvement for Clearwater Forest is going to be much bigger L3 caches similar to what we've seen on the 5th Gen Emerald Rapids P-Core family.

The Intel Clearwater Forest Xeon CPUs featuring the new and updated E-Core architecture will debut in 2025 and utilize the 18A process node.