Intel updated investors on its data center and artificial intelligence (DCAI) progress, including a revamped Xeon server CPU roadmap highlighting the chipmaker's Emerald Rapids, Sierra Forest, Granite Rapids, and Clearwater Forest projects. This data center and AI logic silicon area of Intel's business represents a market opportunity of more than $110 billion by 2027, Intel DCAI EVP and GM Sandra Rivera claimed.

The expansion of that market will be driven by an increased prevalence of "high growth workloads" focused on AI, networking, security, high-performance computing (HPC), and analytics, along with Intel customer needs spanning mainstream processors and discrete accelerators, Rivera said. "We believe our hardware and software solutions are well-positioned to grow and win in the market," she argued.

As the AI market continues to grow in value and number of use cases, "so does the demand for mainstream compute," Rivera said. "When looking at compute demand through the lens of the number of CPU cores delivered to the market, we have seen a mid-20s CAGR over the last five years and expect that pace of growth to continue." To reach those projections, Intel is increasing the amount of CPU cores in its Xeon server CPU roadmap "at a faster rate than in the past," she added.

The roadmap – which begins with the 4th Gen Xeon scalable processors launched earlier this year – also includes new performance-focused core (P-Core) products that address traditional x86 demand and efficiency-focused core (E-Core) products that compete with competitive architectures targeted at high density, throughput, and performance per Watt.

"Fourth Gen Xeon is the highest quality data center processor we've launched in many generations, and we're aggressively ramping to customers," Rivera said, adding that Intel is on track to ship 1 million units by the middle of this year. She credits that "strong demand" to the platform's health and the processor's built-in accelerators, which provide 2.9-times more performance per Watt compared to the previous generation.

Later this year, Intel plans to launch its 5th Gen Xeon scalable processor, codenamed Emerald Rapids. "Silicon is coming out of our factories at a very high quality, volume validation is well underway, and we're sampling the products to customers today," Rivera touted. "We're getting back to schedule predictability with 5th Gen Xeon," she added.

The Emerald Rapids P-Core increases the number of processor cores and is pin-compatible with Intel's previous generation. This gives customers "an easy migration path to take advantage of the processor's built-in workload accelerators, enhanced security features, and increased performance," she said.

After Emerald Rapids, Intel plans to launch two new processors codenamed Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest. The P-Core and E-Core processors, respectively, will launch on Intel's next platform and will share a base architecture that gives "customers portability between the two products," Rivera explained. "The health of these two programs is excellent, with the power-on process exceeding our expectations," she added.

Following the launch delays for Intel's 4th Gen Xeon processors, Rivera expects a much narrower delivery window for the rest of the roadmap. "We'll ship Sierra Forest to customers in the first half of 2024 with Granite Rapids following shortly after," she said.

Granite Rapids is designed to improve upon its predecessor with a total of 128 CPU cores, better performance per Watt, and faster memory speeds, according to Rivera. The first silicon units for this product are leaving the factories healthy, and the project is overall "in excellent shape as we continue to hit all major engineering milestones," she said. Intel is currently sampling Granite Rapids with customers, "and the feedback we've been getting is very encouraging."

Sierra Forest is set to be Intel's first Xeon processor designed with 144 E-Cores per socket. Rivera expects the project to be "highly competitive with high core count data center processors and ARM-based in-house developed solutions." Intel initiated the power-on process for Sierra Rapids earlier this quarter, and Rivera highlighted the "excellent" silicon health of the project. "We were able to boot multiple operating systems on the silicon in under a day," she said.

Following Sierra Forest is Intel's next E-Core project codenamed Clearwater Forest, which "is the culmination of our five nodes in four years strategy," Rivera noted. Intel plans to manufacture Clearwater Forest on 18A – "the node where we plan to achieve process leadership," she said. Intel expects Clearwater Forest to hit the market in 2025.

"As the strength of our roadmap increases, we feel good about our ability to regain market share," Rivera said.