GoKawiilIntel is returning to the data center with Xeon 6+, now harnessing the power of Intel 18A. After revealing Xeon 600 chips for workstations earlier in the year, Intel is turning back to the data center with Xeon 6+, an E-core-only design previously known as Clearwater Forest. The flagship Xeon 6990E+ is designed for compute density, packing in 288 Darkmont cores with 576 MB of L3 cache, with support for dual-socket systems, taking the core count up to 576. Intel claims the 6990E+ delivers an average 30% performance per thread improvement compared to AMD’s 192-core Epyc 9965, as well as up to 30% better power efficiency.
We’ve heard a lot about Clearwater Forest leading up to this launch, including a full architectural deep dive from Intel last year . As a refresher, Xeon 6+ is the culmination of Intel’s disaggregated approach to processor design over the past several generations, using a mixture of nodes and packaging techniques to achieve such high core density. On top of the silicon stack are 12 CPU chiplets built on Intel 18A, each packing 24 Darkmont E-cores without Hyper-Threading. They sit on three base tiles that hold the L3 cache and memory, which are built using Intel 3. Sandwiching this stack are two I/O chiplets built on Intel 7. Bringing the chiplets together are 12 EMIB 2.5D tiles, which are silicon bridges built directly into the substrate.
Outside of the chips, Xeon 6+ chips work with existing Xeon 6 platforms on the LGA 4710 socket (the same as Sierra Forest). Intel supports both single and dual-socket systems, and with support for up to 12 channels of DDR5, running at up to 8000MT/s and 96 lanes of PCIe 5.0 (64 lanes of CXL). Those platform specs are for a single-socket system.
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The chips come with a range of acronym-adorned hardware accelerators, including Intel QAT (QuickAssist Technology), DLB (Dynamic Load Balancer), DSA (Data Streaming Accelerator), and IAA (In-memory Analytics Accelerator). The flagship 6990E+ comes with 16 total accelerators, four for each type included in the architecture. Intel also expanded the chips with instructions to accelerate the SHA-512, SM3, and SM4 cryptographic algorithms, along with more robust confidential computing capabilities through Intel SGX for application isolation and Intel TDX for VM isolation.
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New for Xeon 6+ CPUs is Intel Application Energy Telemetry, or AET. It’s a hardware-based telemetry tool that Intel says can provide insight on energy usage for “workloads, microservices, containers, VMS, applications and even on an individual software thread-level when desired.” Xeon 6+ CPUs are the first to support AET, and Intel says it will be available on Xeon processors going forward, specifically targeting data center providers.
Although there was some hope we’d see Intel’s long-awaited AVX10.2 with Xeon 6+, that isn’t the case. The CPUs don’t support any form of AVX10, or even AVX-512. They top out at AVX2, an Intel spokesperson confirmed to Tom’s Hardware.
Intel Xeon 6+ ‘Clearwater Forest’ specs
Intel has four Xeon 6+ designs and six SKUs total, with the top two models in the stack coming in power-limited configurations with lower base and all-core turbo speeds, but otherwise identical specs.
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