Intel’s Five Chiplets: A Breakdown

During the course of the discussion about the technical particulars, Intel demonstrated Granite Rapids central processor units. It has five Chiplets

Intel demonstrates their Xeon Scalable ‘Granite Rapids’ processors, which are members of the next generation of computer CPUs

This week, as part of a presentation that highlighted the innovative packaging capabilities of Intel, the firm displayed its 6th Generation Xeon Scalable ‘Sapphire Rapids’ central processing units (CPUs). The multi-tile datacenter CPUs are not expected to be available for purchase on the market until the first half of 2024, and the business is now collaborating with its clients to test out prototypes of the technology.

This week, a hardware leaker using the handle revealed the specs of ES1 samples of these chips while the announcement was still in the process of being finalised.

The ‘Granite Rapids’ processor is an example of Intel’s Xeon Scalable series, which is now in its 6th generation

It features a disaggregated architecture with five chiplets: two high-speed input/output (HSIO) tiles in addition to three tiles that house Performance cores with 2MB of L2 cache, 4MB of L3 cache, and four DDR5 connections. It is anticipated that the most advanced Granite Rapids central processing units will provide a maximum of six UPI connections, twelve DDR5 memory channels, and support for both DDR5-6400 and MCR DIMMs. In addition to this, there will be 136 PCIe Gen5 lanes that are accessible and are compatible with CXL 2.0.

According to the information that was leaked, the most powerful ES1 prototypes feature 56 cores and 288 megabytes of cache. Furthermore, these samples have an eight-channel memory subsystem, which indicates that they carry two chiplets. This leads one to conclude that each tile has either 28 or 30 cores, and that in order to provide redundancy, two cores on each chiplet are deactivated. This leads one to believe that each tile includes either 28 or 30 cores. The quantity of processor cores that are incorporated in Intel’s Granite Rapids central processing units has not been disclosed to the general public.

In light of this, it is not unreasonable to infer that the Granite Rapids central processing units that will be constructed will have 84–90 cores given the information shown here. It is possible for the speed of operation for these cores to vary anywhere from 1.10 GHz all the way up to 2.70 GHz, depending on the particular model. It is important to keep in mind that we are discussing engineering samples of the CPUs even if their speeds may seem like they are on the lower end of the spectrum.

The computer chiplets are manufactured using a method known as Intel 3, which is classified as a manufacturing node belonging to the 3nm-class.

On the other hand, the HSIO chiplets are made using a manufacturing node that belongs to the 7nm class. This is a tried-and-true technique that has been validated by industry experts as being suitable for today’s I/O chiplets in terms of both their performance and their cost.

The images that Intel has released of Granite Rapids central processing units (CPUs) make it abundantly evident that the package sets the two HSIO dies at its top and bottom, while the compute dies are positioned in the centre of the device. Intel has also provided images of Granite Rapids CPUs.

This is true regardless of where the compute dies are situated with relation to the device’s centroid. All of them are linked to one another by an unspecified number of EMIB connections that are hidden inside the substrate. The phrase “Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge” is shortened to “EMIB,” while its full name is “Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge.”

Due to the flexibility offered by Intel’s Granite Rapids design, a single server may have anywhere from one to eight sockets installed in it. This allows for a large variety of different configuration possibilities. An insider claims that Intel is now only sampling a single Granite Rapids central processing unit (CPU) that is capable of 8S while all of this is going on.

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