Intel has announced plans to roll out Xeon 6900P servers processors (Granite Rapids) featuring up to 128 productive P-core in the third quarter of this year. In the first quarter of 2025, the manufacturer plans to launch Xeon 6900E chips (Sierra Forest), offering up to 288 energy-efficient E-cores.
Xeon P-Core and E-Core models
Unlike the Xeon E-Core, the Xeon P-Core models are designed to deliver high performance in high-intensity workloads such as High-Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence, database analytics, networking technologies, peripheral devices, and storage operations. Both series of processors employ a common platform and software stack.
Upcoming Launches
Intel will release the high-end models of the Xeon 6900P processors with high-performance cores in the third quarter of this year. The Xeon 6700P and Xeon 6300P chips will be launched in the first quarter of 2025, alongside the release of Xeon 6900E (Sierra Forest) processors, which will offer up to 288 E-cores.
Intel Xeon 6900 series
The Intel Xeon 6900 series is composed of processors with a large number of computing chiplets: up to four in the Xeon 6900E (Sierra Forest) with E-cores and up to five chiplets in the Xeon 6900P (Granite Rapids) with P-cores. The Xeon 6900E processors will be released with three different chiplet configuration variants: LCC (with 16 cores), HCC (up to 48 cores), as well as XCC with two blocks of up to 86 cores.
The XCC chiplet of Xeon 6900P processors will be launched in three configurations, offering up to 128 cores. The processor itself contains up to 144 cores, however, some of the computational blocks are disabled to maintain uniform chip yield. Thus, the following processor configurations are expected:
- Xeon 6900P (XCC SKU) — 3 computing chiplets + 2 IO chiplets = up to 128 cores;
- Xeon 6700P (XCC SKU) — 2 computing chiplets + 2 IO chiplets = up to 86 cores;
- Xeon 6500P (HCC SKU) — 1 computing chiplet + 2 IO chiplets = up to 48 cores;
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