Intel Unveils Xeon 6 Branding: New Naming Starts With Sierra Forest E-Core & Granite Rapids P-Core CPUs

Intel Unveils Xeon 6 Branding: New Naming Starts With Sierra Forest E-Core & Granite Rapids P-Core CPUs 1

Intel has revised its Xeon Scalable family naming to a simpler "Xeon 6" branding for its next-gen Sierra Forest & Granite Rapids CPUs.

Currently, Intel uses the Xeon Scalable Family branding for its data center and enterprise chips. This branding was recently adopted by the 5th Gen Emerald Rapids CPUs but that is about to change as the blue team is moving to a simpler naming convention.

Intel Xeon processors offer performance-efficient solutions to run current GenAI solutions, including RAG, that produce business-specific results using proprietary data. Intel introduced the new brand for its next-generation processors for data centers, cloud and edge: Intel Xeon 6. Intel Xeon 6 processors with new Efficient-cores (E-cores) will deliver exceptional efficiency and launch this quarter, while Intel Xeon 6 with Performance-cores (P-cores) will offer increased AI performance and launch soon after the E-core processors.

Intel Newsroom

The new naming scheme which starts with the 6th Gen Xeon processors will simply use the "Xeon 6" branding. The first two processor families that will make use of this branding are the E-Core-only Sierra Forest chips which are expected to feature up to 288 Sierra Glen cores and the P-Core-only Granite Rapids chips which are expected to feature up to 3 compute dies based on the Redwood Cove core architecture. Both of these chips were originally going to use the 6th Gen Xeon Scalable family naming convention.

Intel Xeon 6 processors with E-cores (code-named Sierra Forest): 4x performance per watt improvement and 2.7x better rack density compared with 2nd Gen Intel Xeon processors. Customers can replace older systems at a ratio of nearly 3-to-1, drastically lowering energy consumption and helping meet sustainability goals.

4x performance per watt improvement and 2.7x better rack density compared with 2nd Gen Intel Xeon processors.

Customers can replace older systems at a ratio of nearly 3-to-1, drastically lowering energy consumption and helping meet sustainability goals.

Intel Xeon 6 processors with P-cores (code-named Granite Rapids): Incorporate software support for the MXFP4 data format, which reduces next token latency by up to 6.5x versus 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors using FP16, with the ability to run 70 billion parameter Llama-2 models.

Incorporate software support for the MXFP4 data format, which reduces next token latency by up to 6.5x versus 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors using FP16, with the ability to run 70 billion parameter Llama-2 models.

Intel shared some additional performance figures, showcasing up to 2.4x performance per watt improvement and 2.7x performance per rack improvement. The Sierra Forest chips are expected to ship in Q2 2024. The Intel Granite Rapids P-Core-only CPUs will follow those soon later in the year.