Intel Granite Rapids-AP “Xeon 6900P” CPU Lineup Leaks Out: Xeon 6980P Flagship With Up To 128 P-Cores, 504 MB Cache, 500W TDP

Intel's next-gen Granite Rapids-AP "Xeon 6900P" CPUs will feature some impressive specs with up to 128 P-Cores and over 500 MB of cache.

At Computex, Intel announced its next-gen Xeon 6 lineup coming in two configurations, the Xeon 6P based on the P-Core architecture and the Xeon 6E based on the E-Core architecture.

The families are further segmented into four distinct lineups which include Xeon 6700P with up to 86 cores, Xeon 6900P with up to 128 cores, Xeon 6700E with up to 144 cores, and Xeon 6900E with up to 288 cores. The Xeon 6700E CPUs are already launched and are shipping with Xeon 6900P the next in line for launch this quarter. The rest of the families, Xeon 6700P and Xeon 6900E, will launch in Q1 2025.

Intel is launching its higher-end Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids-AP" CPU family first to tackle AMD's upcoming Turin lineup which launches in the second half of 2024 too. Both of these chips have one thing in common: a maximum core count of 128 cores. Unlike the Xeon 6E family which relies on E-Cores, the Xeon 6P CPUs will feature the Redwood Cove core architecture. These new P-cores will compete directly against AMD's Zen 5 core architecture on its Turin family.

Further detailing the lineup, leaker @Jaykihn, has shared configurations of five Intel Granite Rapids-AP "Xeon 6900P" SKUs which include the flagship Xeon Platinum 6980P, followed by the 6979P, 6972P, 6952P, and 6960P. These chips come in 128, 120, 96, and 72 core configurations and feature loads of cache. The base clocks scale from 2 GHz on the flagship and 2.7 GHz on the entry-level SKU with 72 cores and TDPs ranging from 400W up to 500W.

These chips are also stated to feature over 500 MB of (LLC) cache which is comparable to AMD's EPYC Turin with 512 MB of LLC. Intel Redwood Cove also features 2 MB of L2 cache per core so that's an additional 256 MB of cache which forms a pool of over 750 MB cache, higher than the 650 MB pool cache on the Turin Zen 5 family. AMD will have 3D V-Cache boosted flavors with much higher cache counts but it looks like Intel finally has a product that will compete with AMD with core count parity and a leadership in cache count.

These chips will be easy to compare against one another in performance, value, and efficiency figures which will decide which is the ultimate champion for data centers. Other important aspects of the Intel Xeon 6P lineup include support for up to 12-channel memory, up to DDR5-6400 & MCR-8800 MT/s speeds, up to 96 PCIe Gen 5.0/CXL 2.0 lanes and up to 6 UPI 2.0 links. The Xeon 6900P CPUs can also be configured in up to 2S platforms for up to 256 cores and 512 threads while the Xeon 6700P CPUs will be supported in 8S platforms for up to 688 cores and 1376 threads, offering insane densities.