Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP, 56-core ‘Golden Cove’ pattern discovered

Recently, an Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP (Xeon) processor with 56 “Golden Cove” cores was discovered. It is a technical pattern that reaches an MTP consumption of up to 420 W, which is quite high.

Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP, 56-core ‘Golden Cove’ pattern uncovered

The example was spotted by Yuuki_ans, and it is a technical example with quite high power consumption for what we are used to in the desktop CPU market.

Specifically, it is a 56-core model that runs at a speed of 3.3 GHz in ES state and consumes around 420 W in MTP mode and 764 W at maximum power consumption.

It is speculated that it is the Xeon Platinum 8476 or Platinum 8480 model with a total of 56 cores and 112 threads. This processor would have a total of 112 MB of L2 cache and 105 MB of L3 cache. It was noted that the processor runs on an Intel C741 (Emmitsburg) platform with 1 TB of DDR5 memory with CL40-39-38-76 timings.

Sapphire Rapids-SP, Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP, 56-core ‘Golden Cove’ pattern discovered, Optocrypto

The Golden Cove cores are the same ones used in the Alder Lake processors, more specifically, the high-performance P-Core cores. Sapphire Rapids-SP does not use efficiency cores, moving away from Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture.

The discovered pattern and technology run at a base clock of 1.9 GHz and a boost clock of 3.3 GHz. In single-core mode, the processor can run at a clock rate of 3.7 GHz.

The power consumption is 350 W (PL1) and a maximum Turbo power (PL2) of 420 W. However, the power limit is 764 W, which could be reached with AVX-512 enabled.

From the screenshot, we can see that the processor runs at a temperature of 99 degrees. We don’t know what kind of cooling was used in this case.

If these power consumption numbers remain the same in the final version, Intel will have problems with the power/efficiency factor compared to AMD EPYC, which will make the jump to the 5nm “Genoa” generation this year.

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