Intel Unveils 2023-2025 Xeon CPU Roadmap: Emerald Rapids In 2023, Granite Rapids & Sierra Forest In 2024, Clearwater Forest In 2025

Intel has just unveiled its next-generation Xeon Data Center CPU roadmap for 2023-2025 featuring brand new P-Core & E-Core chip families.

Intel has segmented its next-gen Xeon Data Center CPU lineup into two categories, P-Core & E-Core. The P-Core products will be the standard Xeon products that we have seen over the years. Then we have the E-Core products which will utilize the more energy-efficient architectures & the first product is expected next year in the form of Sierra Forest.

The follow-up to Intel's 4th Gen Sapphire Rapids CPU lineup comes in the form of the 5th Gen Xeon family, codenamed Emerald Rapids. The Emerald Rapids-SP CPUs are already sampling and are on schedule to deliver in Q4 2023.

These chips will offer higher-quality silicon with volume validation in progress. Other features of the Emerald Rapids-SP lineup include a focus on higher performance/watt in the same power envelope, delivering increased core density gen-on-gen. The chips will be fully compatible with the existing 4th Gen Eagle Stream platform, allowing for easy migration from the previous generation.

Emerald Rapids is expected to make use of the Raptor Cove core architecture which is an optimized variant of the Golden Cove core that will deliver 5-10% IPC improvement over Golden Cove cores. It will also pack up to 64 cores &  128 threads which is a small core bump over the 56 cores & 112 threads featured on Sapphire Rapids chips.

Emerald Rapids-SP Xeon CPUs will be peaking out at 64 cores and available in 1S/2S server configurations. The 4S-8S platforms will have to wait till the next-generation Granite Rapids-SP Xeon chips for an upgrade. But with that said, one key area that is expected to see a huge boost on Emerald Rapids-SP Xeon CPUs is the L3 cache. It is reported that the Emerald Rapids-SP CPUs will pack up to 320 MB of L3 cache. This is 2.84x higher than the 112.5 MB L3 cache featured on the top Sapphire Rapids-SP chip, the Xeon 8490H.

After Emerald Rapids, Intel plans to move to a brand-new Xeon Data Center CPU family & platform that will come in the form of Granite Rapids. The new processors are on schedule for delivery in '24 and will be closely following Sierra Forest. The Granite Rapids-SP CPUs will utilize the latest x86 CPU architecture based on the Intel 3 process node. This is expected to be known as the Redwood Cove core.

Intel did tease a high-level overview of its Granite Rapids-SP CPU during its 'Accelerated' keynote which featured three tiles for compute and two I/O dies at the top and sections of the interposer. The chip is expected to feature over 100 P-Cores but the exact core counts haven't been officially revealed.

Featuring support on the Mountain Stream & Birch Stream platforms, the Granite Rapids-SP Xeon CPUs will further increase core densities, memory, and I/O innovations such as support for DDR5-8800 MCR RDIMMs. The new memory will provide 83% peak bandwidth and deliver up to 1.5 TB/s bandwidth to the platform. Intel even showcases a demo of an early Granite Rapids-SP chip running DDR5-8000 MT/s memory on a dual-socket platform (2S) and showing great health:

Intel Granite Rapids Xeon CPUs Running DDR5-8000 MCR RDIMM:

At the same time as Intel launches its Granite Rapids-SP Xeon CPUs, Chipzilla will also be releasing its first-gen E-Core products codenamed Sierra Forest which have already achieved excellent silicon health and are on schedule for delivery in the first half of 2024. The CPU will house up to 144 cores based on the Intel 3 process node and deliver a new class of Xeon chips built for cloud-optimized workloads.

It is given at this point that Intel wants to compete against all AMD offerings. While the standard Scalable family competes against the main EPYC opponents, Sierra Forest will be competing with a range of compute-optimized EPYC parts.

The Intel Sierra Forest CPUs with 144 Cores will be competing with AMD's EPYC Bergamo 128-core CPUs which utilize the efficiency-tuned Zen 4C architecture in the same cloud data center segment. Intel showcased a demo of the Sierra Forest chip that was running at 100% health across all 144 cores as shown below:

Intel Sierra Forest 144-Core Xeon CPUs Showing 100% Health In Demo:

These chips will be followed by the 2nd Gen E-Core Xeon product family known as Clearwater Forest which is on schedule for launch in 2025 and will utilize the Intel 18A process node and deliver even higher core counts. The Intel 18A process node will bring refinements to the RibbonFET architecture to deliver another major leap in transistor and chip performance.

In addition to these, the company also gave an update on its future GPU, Dedicated AI, and FPGA roadmap. The GPU lineup will see a new generation of Data Center GPU Flex series codenamed Melville Sound and the company will also deliver its future accelerator codenamed Falcon Shores.  Falcon Shores recently replaced Rialto Bridge and will only feature GPU cores in its first gen with a follow-up gen combining CPU and GPU cores in a chiplet fashion similar to AMD's Instinct MI300 accelerators.

The next-gen Habana Gaudi accelerators featuring brand-new architecture are also mentioned along with next-gen FPGAs under the eASIC and AGILEX families. Overall, Intel's future roadmap & product lineup looks packed with lots of chips but the main question remains whether Chipzilla be able to hit the roadmap milestones on time or will they face similar delays as the past-gen product lineups.