Intel promises 48-core Xeons with Cascade Lake architecture coming in 2019

Intel unveils Epyc spoiler ahead of AMD Next Horizon event

Intel has revealed more details about its Cascade Lake architecture plans, showing off more details about the CPUs that, it claims, will appear in the first half of 2019 - including a 48-core monster intended to out-core-count AMD's Epyc server and workstation microprocessor.

However, Intel will be sticking with its tried-and-trusted 14-nanometre process for Cascade Lake. It will use multiple dies in a single processor package to cram in some 20 more cores than the Xeon Scalable Processor series, which sticks with a single processor die.

As such, the new Xeon processors will not only offer more cores, but will also be able to support up to 12 DDR4 RAM channels per socket. Furthermore, two chips can be installed per motherboard, providing it supports multiple-processors. This could give a Xeon workstation a total of 96 cores and 24 DDR4 channels to allow for a massive 12TB of RAM to be installed into a single server.

Using similar multi-die techniques to AMD's EYPC processors, Intel's Cascade Lake performance series will be aimed squarely at the server and datacentre world, with performance (and pricing, no doubt) touted for workloads such as machine learning, rather than desktop processing and gaming.

Intel is claiming that the new processors will offer a 20 per cent hike in performance over older Xeon chips. The chipmaker also claims that the processors will offer 3.4 times the performance of AMD's Epyc chips.

While the Cascade Lake advanced performance series takes care of high-end server chips, Intel also revealed the Xeon E-2100 processors for entry-level servers.

Offering up to six cores per processor, the Xeon E-2100 series isn't as impressive as the high-end Xeon chips, but it does come with enhanced security and cloud management features built-in. The chip is targeted at smaller businesses that are looking to have servers that can support their workloads and any cloud services they might wish to deliver without breaking the bank.

The Intel reveal looks very much like a spoiler for AMD's Next Horizon event later today. It is expected to detail new 7nm Epyc server CPUs - dubbed Epyc2 - as well as Vega GPUs optimised for data centres.