Intel Confirms Sapphire Rapids Release Time
After several delays, Intel officially announced that the next-generation Xeon Scalable processor Sapphire Rapids will be released on January 10, 2023. The new processors will be introduced at Intel’s data center special event, which will include server processors, new networking innovations, possible products from Intel’s ecosystem partners, and more. Intel has already sent Sapphire Rapids to select customers, but related products will not be available until next year.
Sapphire Rapids uses the Golden Cove architecture and is manufactured using the 10nm Enhanced SuperFin (Intel 7) process. The new platform also supports PCIe Gen5, CXL 1.1 (Compute Express Link), and eight-channel DDR5 memory, while continuing Intel’s built-in AI acceleration strategy and supporting Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX). Sapphire Rapids will also launch an HBM version with 64GB of HBM2E memory. In addition, Sapphire Rapids will also have a corresponding workstation and HEDT versions.
Sapphire Rapids was originally scheduled to be released in 2021, but it was finally delayed to the first half of 2023 due to various problems encountered in the middle and the yield rate. It was previously reported that Sapphire Rapids had 12 steps during this period, A0, A1, B0, C0, C1, C2, D0, E0, E2, E3, E4, and E5, to revise or change the design. Intel originally intended to use Sapphire Rapids to compete with AMD’s EPYC processors code-named Milan, but the actual delivery time is even later than the new generation of EPYC processors, code-named Genoa.
The latest TrendForce report recently stated that the current yield rate of Sapphire Rapids is only 50% to 60%, which makes Intel almost unprofitable economically. According to Intel’s statement on the latest earnings conference call, Emerald Rapids, which is an optimized version of Sapphire Rapids, is still planned to be released in 2023. Both belong to the Eagle Stream platform. Perhaps Intel really can’t wait any longer.
