More Details About Intel's Grand Ridge and Sierra Forest CPUs Emerge

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Another Atom-class edge/datacenter SoC emerge.

Intel
(Image credit: Intel)

Intel's PerfMon software has gained support for yet-to-be announced processors, codenamed Grand Ridge and Sierra Forest, and revealed some additional details about these CPUs per Twitter user @InstLatX64. In addition, PerfMon got support for Intel's Granite Rapids processors, which is an indicator that development of the CPU is proceeding.

(Image credit: @InstLatX64)/Twitter)

As it turns out, both 144-core Sierra Forest and Grand Ridge processors will feature Intel's next generation energy-efficient cores based on the Crestmont microarchitecture, which will further increase performance and feature set of Atom-class cores. The same technology will be used for the company's Meteor Lake processors, though these CPUs will be aimed at completely different market segment.

Intel's Sierra Forest is of course the company's first Xeon processor based on energy-efficient cores that will use up to 144 Crestmont cores and will be made on Intel 3 (3 nm-class) fabrication process. The system-on-chip will share LGA7529 form-factor with Granite Rapids processor featuring high-performance Redwood cores, but will target primarily cloud applications that need huge core counts and energy efficiency rather than single-threaded performance. 

When it comes to Grand Ridge CPUs, not everything is that simple. Judging by the codename, this one will succeed Snow Ridge, Intel's special-purpose Atom-branded SoC for communications market. The first details about Grand Ridge processor emerged three years ago and revealed that the chip will indeed serve specialized applications, which is why it will rich built-on networking and I/O capabilities as well as Intel's QuickAssist Technology (QAT) accelerator. 

One interesting thing about Grand Ridge is that it will support such instructions as AVX-NE-CONVERT (converts values from BF16 to FP32, from FP16 to FP32, and from single-precision floating-point to BF16) and AVX-VNNI-INT8 (which looks to be an INT8 variant of the AVX-VNNI instructions present in Golden Cove). Both instructions are designed to enhance deep learning capabilities of Intel CPUs and will make Crestmont-based products more competitive for edge applications. 

One thing to note about the Grand Ridge rumors from 2020 is that back then it was supposed to be made on Intel's 7nm (HLL+).  Now the company not only renamed its nodes, but accelerated their rollout. Therefore, it is likely that Grand Ridge will now be made on Intel 3 fabrication process. Whether or not this means that it will gain cores and/or features is something that remains to be seen.

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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.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    I feel like none of the Sierra Forest details are new? As for Crestmont, it still does not appear to feature AVX-512. So, don't get your hopes up.

    As for Grand Ridge, it will likely be unobtanium, outside its target market. I'm not aware of a commercially available Snow Ridge board, but there's a chance I'm wrong.

    I'm frustrated enough just trying to find Elkhart Lake Atom boards - and that's supposed to be a more mass-market product. Heck even Jasper Lake mini-ITX boards are far less common than their predecessors. It's no trouble finding them in mini-PCs, but you can almost forget about buying a Jasper Lake motherboard.
    Reply
  • mavroxur
    bit_user said:
    I feel like none of the Sierra Forest details are new? As for Crestmont, it still does not appear to feature AVX-512. So, don't get your hopes up.

    As for Grand Ridge, it will likely be unobtanium, outside its target market. I'm not aware of a commercially available Snow Ridge board, but there's a chance I'm wrong.

    I'm frustrated enough just trying to find Elkhart Lake Atom boards - and that's supposed to be a more mass-market product. Heck even Jasper Lake mini-ITX boards are far less common than their predecessors. It's no trouble finding them in mini-PCs, but you can almost forget about buying a Jasper Lake motherboard.

    And you won't see a commercial board with Snow Ridge - it's sold in a BGA form factor for embedded applications , features a TON of network IO capabilities and will likely only ever be used by OEMs in networking gear / network appliances such as 5G network controllers, high end routers/aggregation switches and traffic analytics equipment.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    mavroxur said:
    And you won't see a commercial board with Snow Ridge - it's sold in a BGA form factor for embedded applications ,
    There are other BGA processors, which you can buy on motherboards that have them soldered down.

    mavroxur said:
    will likely only ever be used by OEMs in networking gear / network appliances such as 5G network controllers, high end routers/aggregation switches and traffic analytics equipment.
    I understand that's the vertical it's targeting, but I wonder if Intel is actively preventing it from ending up in other markets.
    Reply
  • Steve Nord_
    That was nice, but I recall when Intel cancelled Atom, so I am like, maybe don't phrase this news by way of all the other articles. Maybe say how 142 atom cores are going to serve an endpoint, being persistent multithreaded apps that do all the business logic an endpoint can authorize. Repackaging video streams like hardened phone systems that say Intel. Or not! Doing postquantum crypto in the background and serving up low compute streams. Hosting QE3. Enshittifying the entrepreneurial edge, I can't tell.
    Reply
  • Steve Nord_
    mavroxur said:
    And you won't see a commercial board with Snow Ridge - it's sold in a BGA form factor for embedded applications , features a TON of network IO capabilities and will likely only ever be used by OEMs in networking gear / network appliances such as 5G network controllers, high end routers/aggregation switches and traffic analytics equipment.
    Hey, you know where it's at! And it's surveillance capitalism!? Is there an application that would be acceptable to Democracy like Chinese Provinces or Turkey or aspects of Europe?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Steve Nord_ said:
    That was nice, but I recall when Intel cancelled Atom,
    They never cancelled Atom. They just limited the Atom branding to the embedded market. Both for consumer and embedded/industrial markets, you can trace the lineage of their E-cores back through many generations, to the original Atom.

    What Intel did cancel was their Phone SoCs. That's probably what you're thinking of?
    Reply