In last month's Intel earnings report** meeting, it was revealed that the ClearWater Forest processor using the Intel 18A process has been taped out, and it is the successor to Xeon Sierra Forest, which uses the full E-Core architecture, which has not actually been launched, and is expected to be released in the middle of this year, and the E-Core used by Sierra Forest is codenamed Sierra Glen, which is Meteor A slightly modified version of Crestmont on Lake, while the Darkmont core used by Clearwater Forest is based on a modified version of Skymont on Arrow Lake.
According to Bionic Squash, Clearwater Forest will use Foveros Direct advanced packaging technology, which was originally expected to be put into production in the second half of 2023, but it should be delayed for now, it uses copper-to-copper hybrid bonding, replaces soldering that affects data transmission speed, and reduces bump pitch from 36um to 10um, thereby greatly increasing chip interconnect density and bandwidth, and reducing resistance, Foveros Direct also implements the partitioning of functional units, making the modular design more flexible and customizable to your needs. With 288 cores, Clearwater Forest is expected to see significant improvements in IPC and performance, and Intel is likely to have a larger cache due to more advanced packaging technology, as Intel can add additional cache to the base module instead of the traditional cache stuffed in the compute module, and Xeon processors with ClearWater Forest architecture are expected to be launched in 2025, in IFS Direct More information may be revealed at the Connect event.