According to info received by YouTuber, MLiD, Intel is prepping a monster APU under the Xeon Sapphire Rapids-SP family with an insane core count of 72 cores, paired with an Xe GPU and HBM2E memory. This SKU is going to be even more powerful than the earlier reported 56-core Xeon flagship and should go toe-to-toe against AMD’s fastest Zen 4 server part. AMD’s Epyc Genoa processors are expected to come with as many as 96 cores and an integrated GPU die based on the RDNA 3 design.
The more interesting part of this rumor is the inclusion of HBM2E memory on the same substrate as the CPU and GPU which should allow for a decent bandwidth while reducing the reliance on system memory. I’m guessing this “Mega-APU” will target AI-heavy workloads which are become a more and more integral part of modern Data Centers.
Sapphire Rapids is expected to launch sometime in early to mid-2022 with the 10nm Enhanced SuperFIN process node and the Golden Cove core architecture which is supposed to be 20-25% faster than the Sunny Cove core powering Ice Lake-SP. Other than that, the new platform will also support CXL 1.1, PCIe 5.0, octa-channel DDR5 memory as well as an increased number of PCIe lanes.
