Intel reveals more details about what its future Xeon chips will look like. You can soon look forward to classic Xeons with P cores and more efficient models with exclusive E cores.

Intel announces more specifications for its upcoming Xeon chip series. These chips are built with both P-Cores (memory) and E-Cores (efficiency) and use a more modular platform. Don’t say it at all chipletsbecause that’s a technology that AMD developed, but the “modular system-on-chips” are chiplets.

Intel expects a double offer for the coming chip generation. There will be Xeon processors with E cores under the code name Sierra Forest, and more classic Xeon chips with P cores under the name Granite Rapids.

P and E nuclei

As a reminder, Intel introduced P and E cores with its Alder Lake Core chips. P cores are the further development of the classic computing cores in Intel Core and Xeon, with a focus on performance through high clock rates and multithreading. E-Cores are said to be more efficient and were derived from the Atom and Celeron cores. They only support one thread per core and have a slightly lower clock speed, but consume less and heat up less.

In its Core line, Intel combines both types of cores on one chip, allowing the CPU to handle light workloads efficiently without draining a laptop’s battery, but still has the power to perform when it’s needed. With Xeon, Intel is taking a different approach and the E and P cores end up on different chips. Logical, because CPUs in data centers are purchased with a specific workload in mind.

Actually, Sierra Forest is completely new with its E cores. Above all, these Xeon chips need to have as many cores as possible, for cloud workloads where this is of paramount importance. Intel is aiming for 144 cores per CPU with a TDP of around 200 watts. With hot chips, the chip designer states that the number of cores per rack has increased by a factor of 2.5 and the performance per watt has increased by 2.4 percent (compared to their own chips). This is about efficiency in terms of performance and footprint, not maximum performance per core. You can look forward to these chips in the first half of 2024.

Granite Rapids

Granite Rapids will be the direct successor to Emerald Rapids. Emerald Rapids will be the next-generation Xeon scalable CPU and is slated to launch later this year. Granite Rapids will follow a year later, in the second half of 2024.

Intel wants to focus on maximum performance here. That’s annoying because AMD is actually ahead of the game here. That’s why Intel is taking a different approach: Granite Rapids chips have built-in AI accelerators on board, allowing Intel to claim that the chips perform excellently on AI workloads. Other workloads remain a little quieter due to AMD-related reasons, although we’ll have to wait and see how the situation looks when Granite Rapids hits the market in 2024.

CXL 2.0

Intel says both Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids will support MCR DIMMs. Intel Flat Memory also enables a better connection between DDR5 and CXL memory, controlled by the hardware. The software sees the entire storage pool. The new Xeons come with CXL 2.0 support. We also mention the maximum 136 lanes of PCIe 5.0.