Possible specifications of Intel's next-gen Granite Rapids-AP "Xeon 6" CPUs with up to 128 P-Cores have been leaked.
Intel Xeon 6 P-Core Family To Feature CPUs With Up To 128 P-Cores: Granite Rapids-AP 6980P, 6979P, 6972P & 6960P Leak Out
The leaked specifications come from RainNymph, a member of the Intel Insiders Community. The member talked a little bit about the Intel Xeon 6 family and what we can expect from the next-gen family too.
First up, we have to talk about the four Intel Granite Rapids-AP "Xeon 6" SKUs which have been revealed along with their specifications. It is stated that the specifications are part of the internal documents from Peking Lab which is a key laboratory for Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Engineering based in Hong Kong, China. The labs will likely be a key customer of Intel's next-generation processors which are designed for HPC workloads such as molecular physics, etc.
The four SKUs include the Intel Xeon 6980P, 6979P, 6972P and 6960P. All four Granite Rapids-AP CPUs have different core configurations which range from 128, 120, 96, and 72 cores. All of these chips are based on Redwood Cove P-Core architecture which is the same architecture featured on Meteor Lake CPUs. The chips are rated at a TDP of 500W and run at base clocks of up to 2.7 GHz & boost clocks of up to 3.8 GHz. The naming scheme was also mentioned by YuuKi_AnS just a few days ago and based on that, all four Granite Rapids-AP listed below fall within the "Platinum" tier:
- Xeon 6980P - 128 Cores (Redwood Cove P-Cores) / 500W / 2.0-3.2 GHz
- Xeon 6979P - 120 Cores (Redwood Cove P-Cores) / 500W / 2.1-3.2 GHz
- Xeon 6972P - 96 Cores (Redwood Cove P-Cores) / 500W / 2.4-3.5 GHz
- Xeon 6960P - 72 Cores (Redwood Cove P-Cores) / 500W / 2.7-3.8 GHz
Considering that Intel's Emerald Rapids (5th Gen Xeon) family peaks out at 64 cores, Granite Rapids will offer double the core count. This will also match the maximum core count of the classic Zen 5-based EPYC Turin chips which are expected to feature up to 128 cores while Zen 5C is going to max out at 192 cores. One thing we should mention is that the "AP" lineup is centered around a bigger socket. Intel's Birch Stream platform will come in two flavors, the LGA 4710 for the SP chips and the larger LGA 7592 socket for the AP chips. Intel will also be offering 288 cores on its Sierra Forest E-Core family.
Besides the Xeon 6 stuff, it is also mentioned by the same member that while the upcoming lineup will segment the CPUs into P-Core and E-Core variants, the successor "Xeon 7" is going to combine both P-Core and E-Core architectures again. There might still be certain P-Core and E-Core variants available for select customers.
As for the platform details, Intel's Granite Rapids "Xeon 6" P-Core CPUs will come in 1S-8S configs with up to 12 memory channels (DDR/MCR), up to 136 PCIe Gen5 lanes and CXL 2.0 support. The chips themselves will have various die SKUs starting with single compute chiplets, dual compute chiplets and up to three compute chiplets. So we can expect to see lots of SKUs under the P-Core family. The lineup is expected to launch after Sierra Forest which will officially debut in the current quarter.
