Intel has delayed the release of Sapphire Rapids until next year

Intel’s next-generation Xeon Scalable processor, Sapphire Rapids, was originally scheduled to ship in 2021 before Intel delayed it to early 2022, and later pushed back mass production to mid-2022. In the first quarter of 2022, Intel sent Sapphire Rapids to select customers, and then again delayed mass availability to the second half of the year. It was previously reported that Intel has delayed the release of Sapphire Rapids yet again.

According to Igor’sLAB, at present, Sapphire Rapids has 12 steps, namely A0, A1, B0, C0, C1, C2, D0, E0, E2, E3, E4, and the most recent E5, and it is not necessarily the last one. The reason why there are so many steps before mass production is that Sapphire Rapids has not fully broken through in the production, and Intel has encountered all kinds of problems during this period, requiring corrections or design changes. The latest filings show that Sapphire Rapids will be released between weeks 6 and 9 of 2023, which is between February 6 and March 3, 2023.

Due to the long wait, some customers have been reluctant to wait and order the affected Sapphire Rapids. The recently leaked early test results of the Sapphire Rapids show that its performance doesn’t look all that great either. Intel originally intended to use Sapphire Rapids to compete with AMD’s EPYC processors code-named Milan, but the delivery time was similar to that of the new generation of EPYC processors, code-named Genoa, and even later after another delay, a schedule far behind the competition.