Intel Confirms Sapphire Rapids Coming to Workstations

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Intel teases Sapphire Rapids workstations.

Sapphire Rapids
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel, late on Tuesday, officially confirmed that its Sapphire Rapids processors are coming to workstations in a teaser video published on Twitter. This is the first official confirmation that the company intends to address this market with its upcoming Sapphire Rapids CPUs. However, Intel is still tight-lipped about the specifications of these upcoming products.

"This thing is ridiculous, it used to take whole room full of computers to do what this is doing on its own, there go my 30-minute rendering coffee breaks," says a lady in the video. "I was on a meeting the other day and our final test runs are coming back really good, so I'd say pretty soon. You should probably take that coffee break while you still can.  

Based on the latest leaks, Intel will market its Sapphire Rapids-WS CPUs (at least, this is how they are called for now, unofficially) under the Xeon W 3400-series name. These processors will use Intel's all-new W790 platform and offer up to 56 cores, eight DDR5 memory channels, and 112 PCIe lanes. In addition, the CPUs are set to be based on high-performance Golden Cove-derived cores with AVX-512 and AMX instructions enabled.

Many Sapphire Rapids-WS SKUs — including the flagship Xeon W9-3495X — will come with an unlocked multiplier and thus be overclockable. The 56-core range-topping model will be the industry's first overclockable CPU for powerful workstations released in years. Intel and AMD essentially abandoned this market and focused on more traditional workstations that never get overclocked.

A rumor is that Intel plans to release its Sapphire Rapids-WS processors next Spring after it first ships Xeon Scalable 'Sapphire Rapids' products for servers. So far, Intel has not confirmed any timeframes for its workstation-grade Xeon W 3400-series products, but at least it clearly stated that Sapphire Rapids is coming to workstations.

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JayNor
    I've seen other leaks about these including chips down to 12 cores, and with choice of 4 or 8 memory channels. Nice to see Intel reviving this market.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Good!

    This means AMD will be now hard pressed to actually put ThreadRipper back into the "middle ground". I want those sweet sweet 4+ memory channels and glorious obscene number of PCIe lanes :D

    Regards!
    Reply
  • tamalero
    -Fran- said:
    Good!

    This means AMD will be now hard pressed to actually put ThreadRipper back into the "middle ground". I want those sweet sweet 4+ memory channels and glorious obscene number of PCIe lanes :D

    Regards!

    This!
    Hopefully AMD will get a good decent kick and make Threadripper again what it was.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    So, the entire stack is all using just the same LGA 4677 socket, right? Because it seems like a waste for the monolithic versions with <= 24 cores to have a full 8 memory channels when they only use 4. Also, with only 64 PCIe lanes connected, the other 48 lanes' worth are just dead pins & motherboard traces.

    I'd consider a 16-core or 24-core version, but not if the motherboard alone is going to cost me like > $1k, mostly for PCIe lanes and memory channels I can't use.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    JayNor said:
    I've seen other leaks about these including chips down to 12 cores, and with choice of 4 or 8 memory channels.
    And what do your "leaks" tell you about sockets? Do we get separate sockets for the MCM and Monolithic versions, or are they the same?
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Socket is the thing no leaks have addressed one way or the other AFAIK. While the monolithic CPUs will be quite a bit less to manufacture the motherboard situation is the big question. Even if boards are made for 4ch and fewer lanes they're still going to be quite expensive if they're using that LGA 4677 socket (I'd assume these would start around $400-500).
    Reply
  • jp7189
    Just give me 16x full fat golden cove cores at high clock speeds and I'll be happy!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    jp7189 said:
    Just give me 16x full fat golden cove cores at high clock speeds and I'll be happy!
    Ah, but at what price? That's where I think the socket issue will be key.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Update: the leaked roadmap indicates it's going to be LGA 4677 for everybody.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-roadmap-leaks-raptor-lake-refresh-hedt-replacement-in-2023

    Too bad. I was hoping they'd follow-on what they did in the Cascade Lake generation, with its LGA 2066 for mid-level users and LGA 3647 for the high-end. That's going to price me out of the Xeon W market.
    Reply