A prominent leak named YuuKi_AnS posted material that appears to offer insight into Intel’s upcoming Emerald Rapids server processors.
The specification documents (opens in a new tab)which the leak claims to have recently circulated to OEMs suggest that the most efficient Emerald Rapids SKUs will have up to 64 cores, at the level of current AMD EPYC chips.
Reportedly, Emerald Rapids will also provide data transfer of up to 20 GT / s, improved memory speed and up to 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes.
Intel Xeon processor issues
TechRadar Pro asked Intel to confirm the accuracy of the specifications disclosed.
The Emerald Rapids leak comes as Intel is still struggling to mass-market its next-generation Xeon Sapphire Rapids chips.
The introduction of Sapphire Rapids was punctuated by multiple delays. Originally scheduled for release in 2021, the new Xeon chips were first pushed back to early 2022 and then to mid-year and year-end.
The company kept its promise to hand over the new chips to select customers in the first quarter, but now it seems most will have to wait until the end of Q1 2023 to access silicon.
“With innovation comes a certain level of complexity and we can see that all customers – OEMs, ODMs, hyper scalers – have a strong demand for platform validation with us,” explained Sandra Rivera, Head of Silicon Data Center at Intel earlier this year .
“At this point, we’re building more time to validate the platform and the product, so we can see the Sapphire Rapids ramp will be later this year than we originally anticipated.”
Despite these delays, Rivera says the Emerald Rapids is still due to be released in late 2023, shortening the life of its troubled predecessor. However, whether chips are capable of competing on an equal footing with Intel’s newest and best rivals is a separate question.
The fourth generation of AMD’s EPYC chips will also debut in 2023, codenamed Genoa, which can boast up to 96 cores, while a branch variant designed specifically for Cloud the workload will be up to 128. While the number of cores is not everything, the gap between Intel and AMD is now huge.
The server processor market has traditionally been the mainstay of Intel, whose Xeon chips dominate virtually all subsectors, from HPC to the cloud, but the latest data suggest that AMD intends to further weaken Intel’s lead, potentially making its highest-ever quarterly profit.
Meanwhile, inevitable entering the Nvidia marketand the increase in the number of Arm-based chips built by hyperscalers like AWS will only increase the level of competition among vendors – and the pressure on Intel.
By Tom’s gear (opens in a new tab)