Intel Sapphire Rapids: HEDT CPU “Fishhawk Falls” with 16 cores surfaced [Gerücht]

Intel has been offering the Alder Lake processors in the desktop market since last November, which for the first time use a hybrid architecture and combine the more efficient Gracemont and faster Golden Cove cores. The latter should actually also be used in the processors of the Sapphire Rapids family, but there have recently been repeated delays.

Xeon CPU found in database

Sapphire Rapids was originally supposed to be released in the fourth quarter of 2021, but apparently nothing came of it. It will be just as tight for the next release date, in the second quarter of 2022 – and recently there were even rumors that Sapphire Rapids could be delayed until 2023. It’s hard to say at the moment whether this is really the case – but at least Intel already seems to have running samples at its disposal. At least one database entry from Sisoftware, which the well-known leaker @momomo_us found, speaks for this.

In the relevant entry we are talking about an Intel Xeon W5-3433, which according to Sisoftware is supposed to be part of the “Fishhawk Falls” CPU family. With regard to the specifications, there is talk of 16 (P) cores and 32 threads with a clock speed of 2.0 GHz.

The cache speaks in favor of belonging to Sapphire Rapids instead of Alder Lake: The Xeon W5-3433 has 2.0 MiB L2 cache per core, which is significantly more than the 1.25 MiB of Alder Lake. If the CPU cores installed in the Fishhawk Falls Xeon are actually still based on the Golden Cove architecture, Intel would give them significantly more L2 cache in the server segment. A large L3 cache is also planned: According to the entry, this can hold 45 MiB.

Related to the topic: Intel Sapphire Rapids: New Xeon CPUs should be further delayed

However, the low clock raises questions. Server processors with extremely many cores tend to clock lower than desktop models, but 2.0 GHz is noticeably low for 16 Golden Cove cores. Regardless of which CPU family the Xeon W5-3433 belongs to, the tested model seems to be an early sample. However, it is unclear whether this really reflects Intel’s current status in the development of Sapphire Rapids.

Source: via tech powerup