Intel's Granite Rapids CPU Leaked: 86 Cores, 172 Threads

Recently, Intel's upcoming Granite Rapids-WS, part of the 6th generation Xeon processor line, has been revealed. Expected to feature up to 86 cores and 172 threads, this new processor has yet to be officially confirmed by Intel, but early samples are reportedly in the hands of partners for testing.

An entry labeled "Intel 0000" recently appeared in the OpenBenchmarking database, with the BIOS version labeled "GNR-WS," pointing directly to the Granite Rapids Workstation (WS). According to OpenBenchmarking results, the processor has 86 cores, 172 threads, and a base clock of 4.8 GHz, though actual test results show a frequency of 2.1 GHz, indicating the chip is still in the early engineering phase.

The test setup for this processor includes a 512 GB DDR5 memory configuration, network capabilities comparable to the Arrow Lake-S platform, an NVIDIA RTX 3090 GPU, and 1TB of storage. This level of performance places Granite Rapids-WS Xeon in a similar league to Intel's Xeon 6700P series, which also offers up to 86 cores. The top SKUs in the 6700P series, such as the Xeon 6787P and 6788P, feature a base clock of 2-2.1 GHz, 350W TDP, and up to 336 MB of cache, with up to 88 available PCIe Gen5 lanes and support for DDR5 speeds of up to 8000 MHz.

While the Granite Rapids-WS processor is closing the gap with AMD's Threadripper 9000 series, which boasts up to 96 cores, Intel still lags behind by about 12%. AMD's Threadripper processors also offer up to 128 PCIe Gen 5 lanes, 384 MB of cache, and 350W TDP, suggesting the competition will be intense.

However, there's a key difference to note: both Intel and AMD segment their workstation product lines into tiers. Intel's new W890 platform, paired with the Granite Rapids WS Xeon CPU, offers mainstream configurations with 4-channel DDR5 and 80 PCIe Gen5 lanes, while the high-end version supports 8-channel DDR5 and 128 PCIe Gen5 lanes. The W890 chipset also features 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes and 8 dedicated to GMI.

Intel's new W890 platform will also include the LGA 4710 socket, which presents a challenge for those currently using Xeon Workstation platforms, as they'll need to upgrade their entire setup to support Granite Rapids WS Xeon. Meanwhile, AMD users can easily transition from the Threadripper 7000 to the newer 9000 series, retaining more flexibility in their upgrades.