Intel has big plans for the new year. The year starts with new products in almost all areas from the smallest CPU to the maximum GPU. This includes multiple offshoots of Raptor Lake for each market segment, and finally Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio. But there's more to come.
Finally new Xeons!
Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio are at the top of the product list for the solutions that are long overdue and will finally appear. But as usual, not everything at once, an insider gives an insight into the long drawn-out schedule of the product presentation and ultimately delivery to the market. As is well known, the official presentation of the series will take place on January 10th, and they will also be offered immediately by Cloud Service Providers (CSP). Around two weeks later, it's also the turn of OEMs.
The information only refers to the large chip, the XCC design with an Xtreme Core Count, i.e. most cores. The smaller chip with a medium number of cores (Medium Core Count, MCC) will only follow after the start of Ponte Vecchio (PV) – that's what rumors had said before.
However, a date is still missing for Ponte Vecchio, just like for the various smaller modifications of the solution, which are also being sent to the market as PCIe cards. Here there can quickly be a window of time until spring, just like for the other products in the Xeon Max series, but also for Sapphire Rapids for 4- and 8-socket systems, which should last until the end of May.
Datacenter GPU Max Series
Introduction
2023/1/10 9:00 PTSales
After DC GPU Max 1550 PV
TBD: Max 1350, 1100— TLC (@leaf_hobby) December 6, 2022
The trailed start of Sapphire Rapids will also affect the other segments, above all the workstation solutions. The Xeon W-3400 and Xeon W-2400, which ComputerBase recently reported on, are to be presented in mid-February (12th to 18th) and then become available in March or April at the earliest. This could also include a variant for the desktop (HEDT), although in the end the desire was often greater than any exact details.
Full charge CPUs for desktops and notebooks
It was already an open secret that Intel will also serve the client segment in the new year. After all, Raptor Lake is already on sale in the form of the first solutions, now the variants for the mainstream market as well as notebook offshoots are following. All will be announced at CES 2023, but not all will come at once.
Raptor Lake-S for the desktop will start directly with the new H770 and B760 chipsets, and Raptor Lake-HX, which is basically just a desktop chip in the notebook package, will also be available right from the beginning of January. Otherwise, the Raptor Lake-H is offered directly in the notebook as the mainstream version with 45 to 55 watts, the offshoot with a lower TDP, Raptor Lake-P with 28 watts, is to go on sale from January 29th. The last to follow is the U version, which will not be released until early March – a similar schedule to Alder Lake in the notebook in early 2022. vPro variants and CPUs for small workstations based on the same chips should also be released by March.
A real novelty then appears again: Alder Lake-N. The small chip without performance but only e-cores and a maximum of eight pieces should finally appear as well. Extensive details on possible specifications had already become known here in the summer of this year.
Raptor Lake Refresh in the second half of the year?
The long-term planning now includes a Raptor Lake refresh in 2023, more precisely from autumn. Of course, the Intel Core i9-13900KS is also expected as the first 6 GHz CPU, but the LGA 1700 socket could probably live a little longer in other areas as well. Because where Intel Meteor Lake aims first remained unclear, the manufacturer spoke primarily of mobile chips. These are traditionally available with a smaller production technology and power-saving options, and a smaller die for the notebook chips at the beginning of production is also an advantage for the yield.
All market segments will probably not be addressed at once, Intel confirmed yesterday that the production alias Intel 4 is now ready for it. But it will still be a few months before it is up and running and millions of CPUs roll off the assembly line. The same applies to Intel Arrow Lake and Intel Lunar Lake, which are to be manufactured in Intel 20A and Intel 18A – at least in part.
