Intel Launches 5th Gen Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" Server Processors

In addition to announcing the Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors, Intel's AI Everywhere event in New York City also served as the launch point for 5th Gen Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" server processors. Emerald Rapids is an incremental improvement over Sapphire Rapids with emboldened AI capabilities, energy efficiency improvements, and now up to 64 cores per socket.

Emerald Rapids is largely a "refresh" generation over Sapphire Rapids but allows drop-in compatibility with existing 4th Gen Xeon Scalable motherboards. Some key upgrades with 5th Gen Xeon Scalable is now up to 64 cores per socket over 60 cores with Sapphire Rapids, DDR5-5600 memory speeds over DDR5-4800 prior generation, up to 3x the LLC, up to 20 GT/s UPI 2.0 speeds, and Type-3 memory support with Compute Express Link. Also with Sapphire Rapids the Intel Trust Domain Extension (TDX) support was limited to select cloud service providers while now with Emerald Rapids is robust TDX support.

There's still some meaty performance upgrades with Emerald Rapids thanks to faster DDR5 memory, higher core counts, and other refinements. With Emerald Rapids is now also up to a two-tile die design compared to four tiles with Sapphire Rapids, which can help with reduced power consumption and overall better efficiency.