Sapphire Rapids is a

codename A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a Code word (figure of speech), code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may ...

for

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

's server (fourth generation

Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same arc ...

Scalable) and workstation processors based on Intel 7. Sapphire Rapids was intended as part of the Eagle Stream server platform. In addition, it will be powering

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

, an

exascale Exascale computing refers to computing systems capable of calculating at least "1018 IEEE 754 Double Precision (64-bit) operations (multiplications and/or additions) per second (exaFLOPS)"; it is a measure of supercomputer performance. Exascale ...

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

in the

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, at

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History

Sapphire Rapids has been a long-standing Intel project in development for over five years and has been subjected to many delays. Sapphire Rapids was first announced by Intel at their Investor Meeting in May 2019 with the intention of Sapphire Rapids succeeding Ice Lake in 2021. Intel again announced details on Sapphire Rapids in their August 2021 Architecture Day presentation with no mention of a launch date. Intel CEO

Pat Gelsinger Patrick Paul Gelsinger (; born March 5, 1961) is an American business executive and engineer currently serving as CEO of Intel. Based mainly in Silicon Valley since the late 1970s, Gelsinger graduated from Stanford University with a master's deg ...

tacitly blamed the previous Intel leadership as a reason for Sapphire Rapid's many delays. One industry analyst firm claimed that Intel was having problems with yields from its Intel 7 node with yields of 50-60% on higher core-count silicon. Sapphire Rapids was originally scheduled for a launch in the first half of 2022. It was later scheduled for release in Q4 2022 but was again delayed to early 2023. The specific launch date of January 10, 2023 was not revealed by Intel until November 2022.

Features

CPU

* Intel

Golden Cove Golden Cove is a codename for a CPU microarchitecture developed by Intel and released in November 2021. It succeeds four microarchitectures: Sunny Cove, Skylake, Willow Cove, and Cypress Cove. It is fabricated using Intel's Intel 7 process n ...

CPU cores * AVX512-FP16 * TSXLDTRK *

Advanced Matrix Extensions Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX), also known as Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX), are extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) for microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) designed to work on matrices ...

(AMX) * Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA)

I/O

* PCI Express 5.0 *

DDR5 Double Data Rate 5 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR5 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory. Compared to its predecessor DDR4 SDRAM Double Data Rate 4 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR4 SDRAM) ...

memory support * On-package HBM2e Memory as L4 cache on some models *

Compute Express Link Compute Express Link (CXL) is an open standard for high-speed central processing unit (CPU)-to-device and CPU-to-memory connections, designed for high performance data center computers. CXL is built on the PCI Express (PCIe) physical and electrica ...

1.1

Packaging

* Multi-die chip with up to 4 tiles. Each tile is a 400mm² SoC, providing both compute cores and I/O. ** Each tile contains 15 Golden Cove cores ** Each tile's memory controller provides two channels of DDR5 with a maximum of eight channels across 4 tiles ** Each tile provides 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes for maximum of 112 across 4 tiles * HBM tile interconnect

Products

Sapphire Rapids-SP (Server)

With its maximum of 56 cores, Sapphire Rapids-SP is designed to compete with

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

's 96-core Genoa. Sapphire Rapids

server products will be scalable from dual-socket configurations up to 8 socket configurations.

Sapphire Rapids-WS (Workstation)

With its maximum of 56 cores, Sapphire Rapids-WS is designed to compete with

's 64-core Threadripper Pro 5000WX. Like Intel's

Core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber * Core, the central ...

product segmentation into i3, i5, i7 and i9, Sapphire Rapids-WS will be segmented into Xeon W5, W7 and W9. According to ''Wccftech'', Sapphire Rapids-WS will be unveiled in February 2023 and launch in April.

References

{{Intel processor roadmap Intel products Intel microprocessors