Intel Xeon Roadmap Shows Sapphire Rapids With DDR5 And PCI-e 5.0 For 2021

A presentation from Huawei shows that Intel’s Sapphire Rapids server processors will be released in 2021 and have support for ddr5 memory and pci-e 5.0. The presentation includes Intel’s Xeon roadmap through the end of 2022.

It is not yet known which process Sapphire Rapids is made with, nor is it clear how many cores the Xeon processors have. According to the presentation, the processors are intended for systems with a maximum of two sockets. Sapphire Rapids will be hosted on the Eagle Stream platform, which has support for eight-channel DDR5 memory and PCI-E 5.0.

Also at Sapphire Rapids IAL is mentioned. That stands for Intel Accelerator Link and that is the name that Intel previously gave to its interconnect based on PCI-e 5.0. That interconnect has since been renamed Compute eXpress Link, or CXL. Tech giants including Facebook, Microsoft and Google have joined Intel for a collaboration around this interconnect. The roadmap seems to indicate that CXL can therefore be deployed from Sapphire Rapids. Granite Rapids is on the roadmap for 2022; with the same properties as Sapphire Rapids. That seems to be a refresh.

Before Sapphire Rapids hits the market, Intel will release Cooper Lake and Ice Lake processors for servers. Cooper Lake comes with up to 26 cores, intended for systems with four to eight sockets. There will also be variants with up to 48 cores for two-socket systems. The Cooper Lake processors support eight-channel DDR4 memory and PCI-E 3.0. With the Ice Lake variants, which are made at 10nm, that is PCI-e 4.0.

Intel itself hasn’t talked in much detail about its upcoming Xeon processors yet. The roadmap comes from a presentation that Huawei gave in Russia. The files were noticed by twitter user @momomo_us and are still online at the time of writing. Earlier this month, Intel gave a broad outline of what is coming in the coming years at a presentation. The arrival of Sapphire Rapids in 2021 was also mentioned.

Official slide from Intel mentioning Sapphire Rapids