It has been a long time since Intel has shown any signs of life in the HEDT line. Just look at the high end of its processors for this sector launched in the fourth quarter of 2019, that is, we will go a year and a half without news. AMD evolves with the new Threadripper 5000, so that could mean the final blow to a dying Intel looking to make up its breath after a big uppercut from its rival. Are you on the verge of a knockout or are you just gearing up for something big?
After 14nm and 18 cores, Intel will attempt to storm the HEDT throne of processors
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X meant a straight into the jaw of its rival, unanswered, without even trying, Lisa Su’s knocked down the giant, they sent him to the canvas, but they didn’t defeat him .
The 64 cores of the AMD option finally seem to have an answer, and that is that although the Threadripper based on Zen 3 and in the 5000 line does not increase the number of cores as such, the performance will, being difficult bones to crack. So what is Intel doing in the meantime?
The answer is simple: Sapphire Rapids with a rather curious concept of chiplets with interposer. The first thing that we have to keep in mind is that Intel is going to go a step and a half beyond AMD, because, although it is based on chips, the design is much more flexible than that of AMD.
The information processed is that the company will integrate 4 different chips: two chips which will be the cores of the processor, these based on Golden cove, a chip which will be intended for an HBM module manufactured by Samsung and the last will be the GPU under the Xe architecture.
Two versions that will increase the number of cores
Although there is no official confirmation of the total number of cores that Intel will integrate into this new architecture, rumor has it that there are two more interesting versions. The first will integrate 56 cores as 14 per chip (4 chips for CPU), which would leave us with 112 threads, which is perfectly possible given that we are talking about the company’s 10nm SuperFIN process.
The second speaks of a version a little more complicated to imagine today: 72 cores divided into just two chips with 36 cores each. This theory is based on rumors and slides supposedly leaked where it was said that Ice Lake-SP could hit those 72 cores at 10nm.
It is true that we are talking about Sapphire Rapids as a platform for HEDT as such, but the reality is that this is the server version of Intel. The real HEDT version would have the same properties and characteristics, but it would come under the name of Emerald rapids. The most obvious question is the most relevant, when will they hit the market given that the new Threadripper 5000 will be released at the end of the year?
Well, rumored in early 2022, so in principle Intel will enter the game again, we’ll see if it’s really competitive and can cope with AMD.