While we wait for the Intel Xeon “Sapphire Rapids” platform to see the light of day, reports about its successor have started to emerge. Named “Emerald Rapids”, the upcoming platform will be much like its predecessor, with slight improvements in memory support, maximum core count, and security.

Leaker @yukki_ans has recently shared multiple screenshots showing details about the upcoming Xeon series. Like Sapphire Rapids, Emerald Rapids will be based on Intel 7 architecture. It will also make use of the same Eagle Stream platform, with TDPs ranging between 125W and 350W, 80 PCIe lanes, eight DDR5 memory channels, and scalability for up to eight sockets,

Bergamo's next generation processor seems to have 160 cores …
（） pic.twitter.com/L8e3J0atWL

— 结城安穗-YuuKi_AnS (@yuuki_ans) September 2, 2022

However, Emerald Rapids will also bring improvements. The Sapphire Rapids platform is limited to DDR5-4800 in 1DPC (DIMM per channel) and 2DPC configurations, but Emerald Rapids isn't. In 2DPC configurations, the latter supports the same memory speeds as the former, but in 1DPC, Emerald Rapids will natively support DDR5-5600.

UPI 2.0 (up to four links) support is also improving. While Sapphire Rapids will be limited to 16GT/s speeds, Emerald Rapids will be able to go up to 20GT/s. Lastly, Intel 5th Gen Xeon processors will feature Trust Domain Extensions, which lets users deploy hardware-isolated VMs. Despite the various delays to Sapphire Rapids, Emerald Rapids chips are still set to release in late 2023.

KitGuru says: These Xeons will likely be going up against a new generation of Zen 4 EPYC processors, so it’ll be interesting to see comparisons when the time comes.  

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