Intel Xeon 6 Clearwater Forest: 288 E-Cores on 18A Process Announced

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Intel unveils Xeon 6 Clearwater Forest with 288 Darkmont E-cores, 18A process, massive cache, and advanced I/O for cloud and AI workloads.

Quick Report

Intel has launched its most core-dense Xeon 6+ processor, codenamed Clearwater Forest, at MWC Barcelona. The chip features 288 Darkmont efficiency cores built on the advanced Intel 18A process, with 12 compute chiplets, three base tiles (Intel 3), and two I/O tiles (Intel 7).

Each compute tile contains 24 E-cores, and a dual-socket system can reach 576 cores. The design uses Foveros Direct 3D stacking and EMIB links for high bandwidth, with up to 1,152 MB of last-level cache. Clearwater Forest supports 12 memory channels, DDR5-8000, 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and 64 CXL 2.0 lanes. The platform targets cloud, AI, and telecom workloads, enabling massive VM provisioning and real-time inference.

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Source(s)

  • TPU