Intel’s intentions for the workstation market with the Sapphire Rapids-WS are taking shape, thanks to the publication of early specifications for the new CPUs by a well-known hardware leaker. If the information released by reputable hardware leaker Enthusiastic Citizen (ECSM Official) is right, Intel’s next-generation Xeon products for workstations and high-end PCs will have overclockable CPUs with up to 56 cores, eight memory channels, and 112 PCIe lanes.
Intel’s next-generation Xeon W processor family for W790-based workstations will reportedly include two product families with slightly differing capabilities. The Xeon W 3400-series CPUs will be built on a multi-chiplet Sapphire Rapids design, with up to 56 cores, eight DDR5 memory channels, and 112 PCIe lanes. Furthermore, these processors will feature Golden Cove-derived CPU cores with AVX-512 and AMX instructions enabled. The Xeon W-2400-series CPUs, on the other hand, will have a single-die design with up to 24 cores, four DDR5 memory channels, and 64 PCIe lanes.
The Xeon W-2400 and W3400-series CPUs from Intel are expected to be packaged in LGA4677 and to be used with W790-based workstation motherboards. One of the first W790 mainboards was leaked last week, indicating that Intel’s partners are preparing to supply these devices sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, rumours say that Intel may not release its W790 platform until next April, making it too early to supply relevant motherboards. However, Intel has never officially confirmed a launch date for its W790 platform, only that it is intended for workstations.
According to reports, Intel’s Xeon W-3400-series portfolio will feature nine variants, four of which will be overclockable. Even the flagship Xeon W9-3495X is expected to include an unlocked multiplier, allowing for overclocking.
Earlier this year, Linux boot logs revealed the existence of Intel’s Xeon W-3400-series CPUs (which come with AVX-512 and AMX enabled). Nonetheless, they specify the Xeon W9-3495 (non-X) CPU, which is clocked at 1.80 GHz base and is not listed by Enthusiastic Citizen. We have no idea if Intel’s plans for its Sapphire Rapids-WS lineup have changed since July, but we are dealing with early material, so certain details may be incorrect.
Intel’s Xeon W-3400-series processors are built on Sapphire Rapids silicon and will enable AVX-512 and AMX instructions for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. Advanced Matrix Extensions is a tiled matrix multiplication accelerator, consisting of a grid of fused multiply-add units that accept BF16 and INT8 input types and can execute up to 1024 TMUL BF16 or 2048 TMUL INT8 operations per cycle per core.
There are currently no workstation-grade CPUs with up to 56 cores and AVX-512 instructions, thus Intel’s X-3400-series processors will have a clear advantage over AMD’s existing Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000WX-series products. Meanwhile, AMD is developing the next-generation Zen 4-based Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000WX family, codenamed Storm Peak, which will enable AVX-512, although we don’t know when these CPUs will be released.
According to reports, Intel’s Xeon W-2400-series family will include eight SKUs, four of which will be overclockable. While we cannot be certain, we believe the W2000-series will be powered by Intel’s 34-core Raptor Lake-S technology. Meanwhile, the top-of-the-line Xeon W7-2495X has 24 cores with Hyper-Threading. Intel may still need to reveal further Xeon W-2400-series products with larger core counts to partners. Perhaps the business decided to forego eight cores in exchange for higher yields, clocks, or possibly acceptable AVX-512 clocks.
The eight-core W5-2435 chip, as well as the six-core W3-2425 and W3-2423 processors, are three fascinating SKUs that Intel purportedly has in the Xeon W-2400 family. If these chips can be overclocked by increasing the BCLK frequency, they will undoubtedly pique the interest of the world’s top professional overclockers. Meanwhile, we can only speculate on whether these components will be commercially successful or follow in the footsteps of Intel’s Kaby Lake-X processors for the X299 platform aimed at enthusiasts.
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