Intel showcases Diamond Rapids chip with a new thermal heat spreader

According to news from Fast Technology on November 12th, Intel recently showcased the physical Diamond Rapids for the first time at the 2024 Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Conference held in Shenzhen, including both the front and back of the processor.

This processor offers up to 256 cores, features a new heat spreader, and has rearranged contact points. Intel emphasizes that Diamond Rapids features a high core count, large cache capacity, and high memory bandwidth, and supports instruction set extensions such as AMX and AVX 10.2.

At the event, Intel positioned Diamond Rapids as a server processor designed for agent AI infrastructure and confirmed its partnership with Tencent to jointly develop related use cases.

Intel also announced that existing cloud infrastructure can be upgraded from the "Granite Rapids-AP" Xeon 6 to the "Clearwater Forest-AP" Xeon 6+, and Tencent also showcased new instances.

Diamond Rapids is essentially built on the same concept as AMD EPYC, i.e., the CPU cores are divided into small-scale CCXs, which are then integrated into CCDs, and each group of CCXs is connected to the IOD via an interface, with the IOD acting as a hub.

Among them, 16 compute tiles are manufactured using the Intel 18A-P process and then installed in 4 base tiles manufactured using the Intel 3-T process, which include 320 MB of L3 cache, etc. Additionally, 2 Fabric Hub tiles are manufactured using the Intel 3 process, which include memory controllers, etc.

The compute module and the base module are packaged using Foveros Direct 3D and then interconnected via UCIe. As you can see, Diamond Rapids is entirely handled by Intel Foundry, with no reliance on external foundries.

Diamond Rapids is part of the Oak Stream platform and will use the LGA 9324 socket. It features Panther Cove-X architecture cores and supports single-, dual-, and quad-socket topologies. It supports 16-channel DDR5 memory with speeds of up to 12800 MT/s, and provides 128 PCIe 6.0/CXL 3.0 lanes.

Intel also plans to pair Diamond Rapids with the Jaguar Shores AI accelerator to create an AI rack-level solution.

Source: MyDrivers (Fast Technology). Content is presented with source attribution. Read the original report.