At Intel's Vision 2024 event, which is being held in Phoenix, AZ, has seen several key announcements. On the datacenter CPU front, Intel is using the show to unveil their newest branding for their venerable family of Xeon processors. Beginning with this year's sixth generation of processors, Intel is "evolving" the Xeon brand by retiring the "Xeon Scalable" branding in favor of Intel's new and simplified "Xeon 6" brand.
The Xeon 6 family is set to launch later this year with two primary variants: an all-performance (P) core chip codenamed Granite Rapids, and an all-efficiency (E) core chip codenamed Sierra Forest. Both of these chips will be sold under the Xeon 6 brand and sit on top of the same motherboard platform, with the Xeon 6 branding intended in part to underscore this shared platform. Though speaking of the chips themselves, at this time Intel isn't illustrating how the two sub-series of chips will be differentiated in terms of product numbers.
Over the last year, we've extensively covered Intel's Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest. For more information about Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest, here are some of our key pieces:
- Hot Chips 2023: Intel Details More on Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest Xeons
- Intel Previews Sierra Forest with 288 E-Cores, Announces Granite Rapids-D for 2025 Launch at MWC 2024
- IFS Reborn as Intel Foundry: Expanded Foundry Business Adds 14A Process To Roadmap
Intel debuted their Xeon Scalable branding in 2017 with the launch of the Xeon Platinum 8100 series, which was built using their Skylake microarchitecture. At the time Xeon Scalable replaced Intel's older Xeon E/EP/EX vX branding, resetting the generation count in the process.
Moving forward to 2024, Intel is looking to build an ecosystem befitting the current demands of technologies within key areas such as data centers, Edge, and the PC. Intel is laying the foundations for what it calls 'Intel Enterprise AI.' Using a vast array of frameworks and accelerators and working closely with partners, ISVs, and GSIs to create a large and open ecosystem, the newly branded Intel Xeon 6 platforms will be key in the enterprise market as we advance.
Intel has adopted a newer and simpler nomenclature for Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest, starting with the Intel Xeon 6 processors. Sierra Forest Xeon 6 processors are set to launch in Q2 of 2024, which include a chip featuring 288 E-cores. It will be the first product to adopt this new branding, which is designed to ease customer navigation between models. Meanwhile the Xeon 6 P-core Granite Rapids processors will come later.
Ultimately, the Xeon brand itself and what it entails (enterprise, workstation, server, and data center) isn't going anywhere. Instead, Intel is putting an increased focus on the generation number of the platform by moving it front and center, to more clearly highlight what generation of technology a part belongs to.
As mentioned, Intel's Xeon 6 processors, based on their Sierra Forest architecture, are set to launch in Q2 2024, while the Granite Rapids Xeon 6 platform is expected to come sometime in the second half of 2024.
