Granite Rapids Solidifies Intel’s New Xeon Strategy

Granite Rapids, Intel’s sixth-generation datacenter-grade Xeon processor, is the performance-oriented successor to the fourth-generation Sapphire Rapids processors released in 2023. Granite Rapids refines Intel’s approach for AI inference acceleration on-CPU by adding support for FP16 data types and refactoring support for vectors. This focus also benefits high performance computing (HPC) workloads, though it provides minimal benefit to mainstream business applications today.

With the sustained popularity of AI, a future in which inline inference is commonplace in traditional workloads is imaginable—Intel is placing a bet on that future for a product with a typical service life of 3 to 5 years. Likewise, support for Compute Express Link (CXL) 2.0 sets the stage for forward compatibility, but widespread adoption of CXL is not expected until version 3.0.