Yesterday Intel launched Granite Rapids-SP CPUs now called Xeon 6, Xeon SoC, and other things. SemiAccurate thinks there really isn’t much to see here but we will list them out for your… err… pleasure?
Last year we saw the launch of the Granite Rapids UCC part, the three CPU tile plus two IO tile variant, no more -SP and -AP it seems. Today we have the XCC 2+2 CPU tile/IO tile variant, the HCC 1+2, and the LCC new die + 2 with up to 86, 48, and 16-cores respectively. Herein lies the first problem, at the UCC launch Intel flatly refused to say how many cores were on a CPU tile. Since 128 doesn’t divide nicely by three, the number was obviously at least 43. 43 is not a nice computer number either and the XCC has 2×43 active cores but the HCC has ‘up to’ 48c. So the answer is 48 right?
Four Of The Five New Variants
Not so fast, all the pictures/renders of the die Intel showed off only have 44 die candidate spots so… We can’t tell either so we asked. It turns out that the multi-CPU tile parts have 44c per die and the single CPU tile parts have 48c. That would be UCC/XCC and HCC respectively but Intel used the same 44c pic for both in the slides. Basically the CPU tile to CPU tile interconnects were removed on HCC and replaced with cores. The LCC die has a claimed 16 candidates and the image matches there so not much controversy this time. Since SemiAccurate is known for snark, we offered Intel help with chiplet reuse planning through backchannels but they politely declined.
The Basic Specs
These variants are packaged into the four new lines mentioned above, with the 6500 and 6700 lines being the meat of the market. They only have eight memory channels exposed even if the two IO dies are capable of twice that. The socket limits the chips to eight to save costs and board layers but relegates higher performance UCC parts to low volume, high cost, bespoke socket parts. Now where have I heard that before?
Three Sets of Xeon 6700/6500
More problematic is the TDP, with the 86 core, 8-channel parts hitting 350W, they simply aren’t competitive with AMD when it comes to TCO. Epyc 9005/Turin CPUs will get you 192C for 500W or 160C for 390W, both of which have 16 memory channels active. If you run the TCO numbers on that, Intel doesn’t come out so well. As you go down the AMD stack, things improve a bit for Intel but, well, lower core count customers tend not to be so focused on TCO.
Moving back to Intel, their presentation follows the path of comparing very select benchmarks where Intel does well, and mostly comparing to CPUs in their own lines. This more than anything tells you about Granite Rapids’ competitive position but that isn’t news to anyone. The long and the short is that this release won’t move the needle for Intel, but again, not news.
The SoC Lineup
Next up on the list is the updated Xeon-D now called Xeon 6 SoC for reasons both obvious and unknown. Take two tiles so 88 core candidates and cap it at 72c. Instead of two IO tiles, use a single new one with 200GbE and media accelerators built in. Add in obligatory AI hype and unexplained VRAN acceleration and you have the new SoC. It sounds interesting but without specifics on the accelerators we will stop far short of being interested.
The Xeon 6300 Lineup
That brings us to the surprise baby Xeon, the 6300 series. This one caps out at 8 cores and two memory channels which means it is probably a repurposed desktop part with the crippled cores fused off. No explanation about this part was given so we can’t tell you much about it. This used to be the realm of the Xeon-D but that has moved up in the world so the 6300 is the new entry device. Yay?
Last up we have a couple of new NICs, the 200GbE dual port E830 and the 10GbE E610 line with either two or four ports. Not much to say here, they are what they say on the tin, a necessary upgrade to support the throughput of the system.
So in the end we have a few new lines of Intel Xeon 6 CPUs. The headline acts are reused tiles from last year’s Granite Rapids UCC/6900 launch, about what you would expect. The LCC die adds a new CPU tile with 16c max, it may be dwarfed by the two IO tiles but it is new. Lastly the Xeon 6 SoC has a new IO tile which is really interesting but SemiAccurate lacks the information to tell you any details. All in all this launch is about what we expected, mostly reused bits with a few twists. It isn’t going to change the game but Intel will sell a lot of them. Told you so.S|A
