Intel Sapphire Rapids chips are now officially ready to hit desktop computers, the company confirmed.
Scheduled to be released sometime in 2023, "Sapphire Rapids" is the codename for the latest and greatest iteration of Intel processors, also known as XNUMXth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
The chip giant says the move will give workstation users faster processing speeds than ever before, with a promotional video (opens in a new tab) claiming that "it used to take a whole room full of computers to do what I did alone, these are my 30-minute coffee breaks."
So what do we really know?
Despite the magnitude of the news, Intel hasn't officially revealed much about the specifications of the new Sapphire Rapids-powered workstations.
Unofficially, however, new workstation processors could boast overclockable processors with up to 56 cores, eight memory channels, and 112 PCIe lanes, according to data from hardware leaker Enthusiastic Citizen reported by Tom's Hardware. (opens in a new tab)
Intel didn't provide a timeline for the launch, which could be a good thing, since Sapphire Rapids has already been hit with several major delays.
The new product line was originally set for late 2021, before a series of delays, some related to pandemic-related disruptions, pushed the release date back (opens in a new tab).
But it's not just workstations that need to be supercharged by the upcoming technology from Sapphire Rapids, high-performance computing needs to get the hang of it too.
According to a press release (opens in a new tab) from the chip giant, Sapphire Rapids will soon be used to power supercomputers, including Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory.
The machine is configured to run on the Xeon Max processor, an x86-based processor, which is Intel's highest-density processor and is said to include more than 100 billion transistors in a 47-tile package with up to 128 gigabytes ( GB) high-bandwidth memory.
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