Intel announced the on-time launch of its high-performance Xen 6 ‘Granite Rapids’ 6900P-series models today, with five new models spanning from 72 cores up to 128 cores, finally exceeding the core counts of AMD’s existing EPYC models for the first time since 2017, and even matching the core counts of AMD’s soon-to-be-launched Zen 5 Turin processors. As a result of numerous enhancements, Intel claims the 6900P series provides up to 2.1x the performance of AMD’s competing 96-core Genoa flagship in the OpenFOAM HPC workload, and up to 5.5x the AI inferencing performance in ResNet50.

Intel’s claims are impressive against AMD’s current-gen models, but AMD has its 3nm EPYC Turin retort with up to 128 performance cores coming next month, setting the stage for a pitched battle for data center sockets throughout the remainder of 2024 and into 2025.