Intel details ‘Clearwater Forest’ Xeon CPUs at Hot Chips 2025

Intel has taken the stage at the Hot Chips 2025 to lift the curtain on Clearwater Forest, its next-generation E-core Xeon processor and the successor to Sierra Forest. The new data center chip is an absolute monster, packing up to 288 cores per socket and serving as a showcase for Intel's most advanced manufacturing and 3D packaging technologies.

According to Wccftech, in its largest configuration, the Clearwater Forest processor is a complex sandwich of multiple chiplets built on three different process nodes. It features twelve compute chiplets fabricated on Intel's 18A process, which are then stacked on top of three base tiles built on the Intel 3 process using Foveros Direct 3D packaging. These are then connected via EMIB to two I/O tiles built on the mature Intel 7 node.

Image credit: Wccftech

Powering the chip are the new “Darkmont” E-cores, which feature significant architectural upgrades over the “Crestmont” cores found in Sierra Forest. Intel has detailed a wider front-end with an extended decoder and a larger instruction cache, paired with a more robust out-of-order engine and more execution resources. In simple terms, this means each core can handle significantly more instructions in parallel, boosting throughput and overall performance.

Intel also confirmed that Clearwater Forest will be compatible with the existing Xeon 69xxE/P platform, allowing for a drop-in upgrade path from Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids. While the platform maintains its 12 channels of memory, the supported speed is increasing, with Clearwater Forest set to utilise faster DDR5-8000 memory. The new processors are expected to be shipped starting in 2026.

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