Intel Xeon Granite Rapids CPUs Boast 480MB Cache – A 50% Increase to Battle AMD EPYC: Will it be Enough?

In the server CPU sector, AMD currently has no rival, as even their Threadripper processors can defeat Intel’s fastest Xeon offerings. AMD’s advantage is further solidified by their EPYC processors. Intel has been attempting to compete for years, but its CPUs offer lower performance at a high price. This could change with the upcoming Xeon Granite Rapids, as it has now been revealed that Intel has increased the cache by 50% compared to the Emerald Rapids.

Intel has dominated the PC and server processor market for years, but when AMD introduced Ryzen, the landscape started to change. Although Intel remains competitive in desktop CPUs, server processors are a different story. AMD has succeeded in producing processors with a higher core count and far superior performance. Compared to the Xeon processors that Intel has released over the years, AMD is superior in virtually every aspect.

Intel’s Xeon Granite Rapids will feature 480 MB of L3 cache, a significant increase. Intel has been launching new generations of Xeon processors consistently. However, despite more cores and performance, they still lag behind. Intel introduced its fifth-generation Xeon processors, the Emerald Rapids, on December 14, 2023, designed for servers and data centers. With up to 60 cores, they seem outmatched by the 128 cores of the AMD EPYC. Intel is not giving up, though, and is preparing for a Xeon Granite Rapids launch sometime in 2024.

While not all details are officially available, it was revealed some time ago that Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest-AP would have up to 128 cores and 256 threads with a 500W TDP. Now, new information about Xeon Granite Rapids has emerged, suggesting that Intel has increased the cache for this new generation of CPUs, from 320 MB (Emerald Rapids) to 480 MB, representing a 50% increase.

Unable to compete in core count, Intel is focusing on cache technology. The Emerald Rapids represented a significant evolution in this regard, going from 105 MB to 320 MB of L3 cache. The next generation, Granite Rapids, will also experience a cache improvement, albeit not as significant. According to its software development emulator (SDE 9.33.0), this generation will feature 480 MB of L3 cache.

With this cache increase, Intel’s Granite Rapids may be more competitive than AMD’s EPYC 9004 series, which offers up to 384 MB of L3 cache. However, AMD’s Genoa-X with 3D V-Cache offers a staggering 1,152 MB of L3 cache. Moreover, AMD plans to launch its first Zen 5 server CPUs in 2024, making the competition more intense than ever.

As the introduction of Intel’s Xeon Granite Rapids with its 480 MB cache (a 50% increase) intends to compete with AMD’s EPYC processors, the question remains: will it be enough?