Intel will be launching dual-socket variants of its upcoming HEDT lineup, offering up to 112 cores per system to tackle AMD’s 4th Gen Threadrippers. The Zen 4-based workstation processors are expected to arrive sometime in late 2023 with as many as 96 cores across twelve 5nm chiplets. Officially still referred to as the successor to Cascade Lake-X (the final Skylake abomination), it’ll completely ditch the HEDT and Core branding. (ambient pharmacy) Instead, it’ll be called the Xeon-W Workstation platform, divided into the mainstream and extreme segments, all based on the LGA4677 socket.
According to MLID, there will be monolithic and tiled variants of Sapphire Rapids-X. The monolithic or the MCC die will come with up to 24 cores and 48 threads with boost clocks of over 5GHz. The maximum boost TDP will approach the 400W mark with quad-channel DDR5 memory. These chips will compete with the Threadripper 3970X and its successors.
The XCC variant of SPR-X will feature 56 cores across four dies, much like its server cousin. It’ll rock octa-channel DDR5 memory with support for up to 4 TB RAM, and PCIe Gen 5 lane count will max out at 112. Interestingly, it’s being speculated that Intel plans to launch dual-socket variants of Sapphire Rapids-X which will push the core counts up to 112 per system. This will cost more than what most people have in their bank accounts, and draw a fair bit of power but may just help Intel stay relevant in the HEDT/workstation market when AMD launches its 4th Gen Threadrippers with up to 96 cores.
Intel is expected to announce Sapphire Rapids-X during its Computex 2022 keynote on the 27th of May. The hard launch is slated for September-October.
