Intel has updated its Data Center roadmap, sharing its plans for the Xeon family for the next few years. The 4th Gen Xeon Sapphire Rapids-SP will be succeeded by Emerald Rapids-SP later this year. Featuring up to 64 cores, it’ll succeed Sapphire on the same process node in the last quarter of the year. Sierra Forest will succeed Emerald Rapids-SP in the first half of 2024.
Sierra Forest will pack up to 144 Crestmont “E” cores fabbed on the Intel 3 (3nm) process. It’s targeted at cloud workloads hungry for compute performance. AMD’s Bergamo “Zen 4c” processors will compete with these chips. Sierra Forest will be succeeded by Clearwater Forest sometime in 2025. We’re looking at E-core counts of up to 384 (speculation), fabbed on the Intel 18A process.
And, of course, there’s Granite Rapids, the true successor to Sapphire Rapids. As reported, it’ll feature up to 120 cores on the Intel 3 process node with increased memory and I/O options. Intel promises a mid to late 2024 launch for Granite Rapids.
