Tipster outs new die shots for Intel's upcoming Sapphire Rapids-based Xeon chips

Tipster @AnsYuuki released what appear to be die shots for an upcoming Intel Sapphire Rapids Xeon chip. We're looking at what's likely the top-end variant, with 56 out of 60 cores enabled - 14 out of 15 on each of the 4 MCM chiplets. 

Utilizing the Golden Cove architecture with 10nm lithography, the new Xeon chips will feature significantly higher IPC and lower power consumption, thanks to a redesigned architecture and the die shrink. This means Intel could have a competitive part to go head to head with AMD's upcoming Zen 4-based EPYC Genoa. 

While the Golden Cove-based Xeon tops out at 56 cores, far less than EPYC Genoa, Intel does have a trick up its sleeve: better support for multi-socket configurations. A dual-socket EPYC Genoa configuration could feature 192 cores, nothing to sniff at.

However, high-end enterprise users could stack up to 8 4th-gen Sapphire Rapids chips in a multi-socket config, for a far higher core count per server rack. Apart from the move to 10nm, the new chips will feature support for the upcoming DDR5 RAM memory standard, along with PCIe 5.0