Recently, an Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP (Xeon) processor with 56 cores ‘Golden Cove’ was discovered. This is a technical sample that reaches MTP consumption of up to 420 W, which is quite high.
Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP, 56-core ‘Golden Cove’ pattern discovered
The example was spotted by Yuuki_ans, and it’s a technical example with pretty high power consumption for what we’re used to seeing in the desktop CPU market.
Specifically, it’s a 56-core model running at 3.3GHz in ES state, consuming 420W at MTP and 764W at maximum power limit.
It is speculated to be 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 memory and 105 MB of L3 cache memory. 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.
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 sample and technology run at a base clock speed of 1.9 GHz and a boost clock of 3.3 GHz. In single-core mode, the processor can run at a clock speed of 3.7 GHz.
The power consumption is 350W (PL1) and a maximum turbo power (PL2) of 420W. However, the power limit is 764 W, which could be reached if AVX-512 is activated.
From the screenshot, you can see that the processor is running at a temperature of 99 degrees. We don’t know what kind of cooling was used in this case.
If these power consumption values are maintained in the final version, Intel will have problems with the performance/efficiency factor compared to AMD EPYC, which will make the jump to the 5nm “Genoa” generation this year.