Intel Xeon Scalable Gets a Rebrand: Intel "Xeon 6" with Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest Start a New Naming Scheme

[AleksandarK]

During the Vision 2024 event, Intel announced that its upcoming Xeon processors will be branded under the new "Xeon 6" moniker. This rebranding effort aims to simplify the company's product stack and align with the recent changes made to its consumer CPU naming scheme. In contrast to the previous "x Generation Xeon Scalable", the new branding aims to simplify the product family. The highly anticipated Sierra Forest and Granite Ridge chips will be the first processors to bear the Xeon 6 branding, and they are set to launch in the coming months. Intel has confirmed that Sierra Forest, designed entirely with efficiency cores (E-cores), remains on track for release this quarter. Supermicro has already announced early availability and remote testing programs for these chips. Intel's Sierra Forest is set to deliver a substantial leap in performance. According to the company, it will offer a 2.4X improvement in performance per watt and a staggering 2.7X better performance per rack compared to the previous generation. This means that 72 Sierra Forest server racks will provide the same performance as 200 racks equipped with older second-gen Xeon CPUs, leading to significant power savings and a boost in overall efficiency for data centers upgrading their system.

Intel has also teased an exciting feature in its forthcoming Granite Ridge processors-support for the MXFP4 data format. This new precision format, backed by the Open Compute Project (OCP) and major industry players like NVIDIA, AMD, and Arm, promises to revolutionize performance. It could reduce next-token latency by up to 6.5X compared to fourth-gen Xeons using FP16. Additionally, Intel stated that Granite Ridge will be capable of running 70 billion parameter Llama-2 models, a capability that could open up new possibilities in data processing. Intel claims that 70 billion 4-bit models run entirely on Xeon in just 86 milliseconds. While Sierra Forest is slated for this quarter, Intel has not provided a specific launch timeline for Granite Ridge, stating only that it will arrive "soon after" its E-core counterpart. The Xeon 6 branding aims to simplify the product stack and clarify customer performance tiers as the company gears up for these major releases.



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[Sabotaged_Enigma]

Boring.

 

[wNotyarD]

Yet another round of Intel naming shenanigans?

 

[Daven]

Keep shuffling those deck chairs, Intel. Eventually you will find the perfect arrangement to stop the ship from sinking.

 

[Crackong]

Had a Xeon w5-2465x running as a VM host.
Despite being a 'Newer' part,
It is just barely faster than a 3955wx, my previous VM host machine.
And the paid VROC is nothing but a pile of rubbish.

 

[ghazi]

Xeon 6? What?
P3 Xeon, P4 Xeon, Core 2 Xeon, Xeon E (if we can lump Nehalem in), Xeon Scalable... Somehow it actually makes sense, but seriously?

 

[Tomorrow]

Intel's awful naming continues...

 

[remixedcat]

Yet another round of Intel naming shenanigans?

it's very bad w xeons there's bronze, silver, gold, platinum, W, E, N and S lol

 

[MaMoo]

Had a Xeon w5-2465x running as a VM host.
Despite being a 'Newer' part,
It is just barely faster than a 3955wx, my previous VM host machine.
And the paid VROC is nothing but a pile of rubbish.

I had experienced the same thing with a 2495x. It was not much faster than my 12700K at Linpack. Single core operations felt generally sluggish.

 

[Ruru]

I wonder that what they are thinking when they come up with these new types of naming. Core Ultra, Xeon 6 and what next?

Also the new "Pentium" aka Intel Processor 300 is something un-understandable.

 

[Voultapher]

Intel's marketing department isn't universally staffed with idiots, if the result is confusing, that's probably one of the goals they went for. But then again, it might just be the result of typical corporate disfunction.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Heaven forbid they would just use a nomenclature that's actually easy to understand, eh?

Intel's marketing department isn't universally staffed with idiots, if the result is confusing, that's probably one of the goals they went for. But then again, it might just be the result of typical corporate disfunction.

I'd say you hit the nail square on the head with that post!