Sapphire Rapids processors are undoubtedly one of the most ambitious and most interesting proposals that Intel has launched to the professional sector in recent years. Its modular design based on blocks of interconnected chips and the high degree of specialization that the chip giant has achieved together represent an important advance in the CPU-based high-performance professional computing sector, but at the same time they also represent a great challenge.
Producing chips as complex and with such a high transistor density under the Intel 7 node It is, in the end, a challenge that requires time, effort and talent, and it is clear that the chip giant is taking more time than expected. Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center and AI Group at Intel Corporation, recently confirmed that production volume for Sapphire Rapids is not going as planned, which means there could be delays in its release date, which was scheduled for the end of this year.
It is important to note that Sandra has not directly said that there will be a delay in the launch of the Intel Sapphire Rapids, she simply commented that production is not going as planned, and this suggests that such a delay would be a possibility, no more. the executive wanted to clear any possible doubt about the Intel 7 node and commented that this is in a fairly mature state. As proof of this, he confirmed that the Alder Lake processors for general consumption, which use that same node, have already reached 15 million manufactured units.
We have already talked on more than one occasion about Intel Sapphire Rapids, and we have told you its most important keys in articles like this one. This new generation of high-performance processors for data centers and servers are emerging as the successors of Ice Lake-SP. As we have already told you, unlike these, which use a monolithic core design, Sapphire Rapids adopts a multichip design with a total of four blocks interconnected, which integrate both the CPU cores and all the interconnection elements and memory controllers.
Intel plans to offer two major variants within their Sapphire Rapids series, one standard and one with integrated HBM memory. This new generation represents a clear commitment to raw performance, but also to specialization and security, thanks to the Intel AMX extensions and its acceleration engines that free the CPU from certain tasks. How could it be otherwise, these processors will be integrated into a platform compatible with PCIe Gen5 and DDR5.
