Pumping up the core counts.

Intel CEO Pat Geisinger announced the launch of the company's Xeon 6 'Sierra Forest' processors during his Computex 2024 keynote here in Taipei, Taiwan. The Xeon 6 lineup is comprised of two families. The E-core-powered Sierra Forest models with up to 144 cores are launching today, but 288-core models will follow next year. Intel's efficiency-focused 288-core chips will face off with AMD's looming density-focused 192-core EPYC Turin models when they come to market later this year. 

The P-core Granite Rapids models, which can have up to 86 P-cores, will launch in Q3 of 2024. Early next year, Intel will offer Granite Rapids with up to 128 cores. These models will face off with AMD's performance-focused Turin models that will arrive later this year with up to 192 cores. Intel will also expand its Xeon 6 roster further in Q1 of 2025 with network—and edge-optimized variants.

Intel's Sierra Forest chips are the first to use the new Intel 3 process node, conferring power and performance benefits. The chips are geared for web and scale-out containerized microservices environments, networking, content delivery networks, cloud services, and AI workloads. Sierra Forrest is designed to provide the utmost performance consistency and have an extreme focus on power efficiency, accomplished with the Intel 3 process node and Crestmont microarchitecture.

The P-core-powered Granite Ridge chips are designed for latency-sensitive work and high single-core performance, making them a good fit for HPC, AI, and general workloads, among many other workloads outlined in the album above.

Both processors will drop into the Birch Stream platform, but Intel carves its P—and E-core offerings into two swim lanes. The Xeon 6700 series has up to either 144 E-cores or 86 P-cores and will slot into standard SP platforms that support up to 350W per CPU. Meanwhile, the 6900 series models with up to 288 E-cores or 128 P-cores will require AP platforms that support up to 500W per CPU.

The 6700E models come equipped with E-cores, as designated by the E suffix, and come in seven different models spanning from 64 cores to 144 cores. These chips have what we would typically consider to be low max turbo clocks that range from 2.6 GHz to 3.2 GHz, but this is optimum for this class of chip and helps boost performance efficiency, a key tenant of the Sierra Forest processors. Intel hasn't shared specs for the full roster of 6700P processors yet.

Despite using E-cores, Intel positions the 6700E models against AMD's P-core-powered EPYC processors. AMD's density-focused Bergamo platform comes with 12 memory channels, whereas the 6700E series supports eight memory channels to reduce cost. Intel shared a series of benchmarks to tout its performance advantages in several workloads, with many of the comparisons focusing on the generational performance improvements that can be expected by upgrading to newer models. As always, take vendor-provided benchmarks with some salt. Intel isn't shying away from third-party benchmarking — we have a server in our labs, so you can expect a full review with performance benchmarking soon. 

Intel's radical improvements in power consumption are a key focus point, so the company compared Xeon 6's power efficiency against AMD's EPYC across a wide range of general compute, database, web, and media workloads. Depending on the workload, Xeon 6's power efficiency advantages ranged from 7% to 34%. Intel also highlighted performance disclosures from its partners, including eBay's findings of a 25% performance-per-watt improvement for its use case against a competitive solution, which would, of course, imply an EPYC processor. 

Other highlights of Intel's performance claims include up to a 2x improvement in AI, a 2.3x improvement in HPC, and up to twice the general compute performance for its users updating over the prior Fifth-Gen Xeons. Naturally, those deltas become much larger when compared to Intel's five-year-old second-gen models, but this is the typical upgrade cadence for most server gear. In media transcode workloads, Intel claims a 2.6x improvement in performance-per-watt and a 4.2x improvement in overall performance over second-gen Xeons. 

Intel also touts strong rack consolidation opportunities, saying that the 6700E series offers a 3:1 ratio over second-gen Xeon. That translates to replacing 200 racks of second-gen Xeon with only 66 racks of the 6700E series. 

We've covered the Sierra Forrest architecture in depth here. The chips come in four different package types, two of which are designed for SP systems and the other two specifically for AP servers. 

All models support DDR5-6400 in either eight- or 12-channel configurations, including MCR DIMM support for the P-core models, boosting throughput up to DDR5-8800. The chips also support either 88 or 136 PCIe 5.0 lanes, but this varies based on the number of sockets in the server. The standard SP servers support from 1S to 8S systems, while the AP platforms only scale to two sockets. Intel also offers full support for CXL 2.0, including support for Type 3 devices.

The E-core models launching today use the Crestmont architecture, while the P-core models leverage Redwood Cove. The chips are socket-compatible, but due to the differences between the core microarchitectures, the E-core models don't support AVX-512 or AMX. Intel also offers a full suite of security features and continues to offer its in-built QAT, DLB, DSA, and IAA accelerators. 

Many of Intel's partners already have Xeon 6700E processors working in the field, but the company is now shipping to the broader market. We'll provide the full architectural breakdown and performance data in our upcoming review; stay tuned.