Intel accidentally leaks monstrous 9,324-pin socket for "Diamond Rapids" Xeon CPUs

zohaibahd

zohaibahd

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In a nutshell: Intel has accidentally spilled some beans on its next-next-gen server processors. Code-named Diamond Rapids, these upcoming Xeon CPUs will slot into the company's Oak Stream platform – and if the leaked details are accurate, they're going to be an absolute unit.

The Xeon leak originated from Intel's own website, where the company briefly posted information about a $900 test interposer for Oak Stream before quickly removing the page. But that was not before eagle-eyed Twitter user @harukaze5719 managed to grab a screenshot.

The screenshot reveals that Diamond Rapids will use a monster of a socket called LGA 9324 – which has a staggering 9,324 pins. That makes it nearly six times bigger than the LGA 1700 socket used for consumer CPUs, and more than double the size of the LGA 4677 socket powering Intel's latest 4th and 5th-gen Xeon chips.

Intel has already started seeding sample test tools for Oak Stream to partners and we can expect the first Diamond Rapids CPUs to ship in late 2025 or early 2026. As for the socket, the screenshot lists it as up for pre-orders with shipments expected to begin in the final quarter of this year.

As for why Diamond Rapids needs such a gargantuan socket, the leading theory is that it will pack significantly more cores and memory channels than previous Xeon chips. Rumor has it Diamond Rapids could get up to 16 DRAM channels along with support for PCIe 6.0.

Of course, this is all speculation for now. What we do know with greater certainty is that Diamond Rapids will follow Intel's 18A "Clearwater Forest" Xeons in the product roadmap. Clearwater Forest is still in early testing, having just powered on alongside Panther Lake for the first time this month, as revealed by Intel.

Diamond Rapids will utilize Intel's 14A process node when it eventually arrives in a year or two. And with that monstrous LGA 9324 socket, it seems clear Intel is prepping something truly massive to take on AMD's own high-core-count Epyc "Venice" chips in the next round of the server CPU wars.

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Intel accidentally leaks monstrous 9,324-pin socket for "Diamond Rapids" Xeon CPUs

 
seeprime said:
I really hope Intel has engineered energy efficiency onto the new Xeon design. Its recent track record on cpu power efficiency has been terrible.
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No way. Intel has much more market share on servers than AMD has and because efficiency is very important on servers, you cannot be right.
 
HardReset said:
No way. Intel has much more market share on servers than AMD has and because efficiency is very important on servers, you cannot be right.
Click to expand...
Are you aware of EPYC vs Xeon results ?
Over the past 6-7 years Intel has been steadily loosing market share to AMD(and ARM)
Efficiency is exactly one of the metrics intel Xeon loose to EPYC in, and that is by a wide margin.
If you look at general performance, EPYC is also way ahead, offering higher performance and more cores.
To top that off, AMD has also been offering better TCO than intel. Altho I think they are about even on TCO now, there is no reason AMD should be cheaper since they clearly have a stronger product.
Intel has gone from having 90+% of the datacenter market, to now having 70% or less.
This shift takes time due to cadance and intel offering insane discount to try and stop the bleed.

All this is a good thing for the market and in the end, the consumer.
 
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Cracken said:
Are you aware of EPYC vs Xeon results ?
Over the past 6-7 years Intel has been steadily loosing market share to AMD(and ARM)
Efficiency is exactly one of the metrics intel Xeon loose to EPYC in, and that is by a wide margin.
If you look at general performance, EPYC is also way ahead, offering higher performance and more cores.
To top that off, AMD has also been offering better TCO than intel. Altho I think they are about even on TCO now, there is no reason AMD should be cheaper since they clearly have a stronger product.
Intel has gone from having 90+% of the datacenter market, to now having 70% or less.
This shift takes time due to cadance and intel offering insane discount to try and stop the bleed.

All this is a good thing for the market and in the end, the consumer.
Click to expand...

I have been hearing this "efficiency is important on servers" for years. So if AMD really is so much ahead on efficiency while also being cheaper, then AMD should have big lead on server market share, not just less than 30%. Right?

Above means that efficiency is not important on servers. Intel CPU is first and others are much less important aspects.

seeprime said:
Unless you're joking, I suggest you do a bit of research on recent server processor energy efficiency. https://vtechinsider.com/amd-epyc-processor-vs-intel-xeon/
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Then why this oh so important efficiency plays so small role on server market share? Just look at retail market where AMD dominates despite efficiency is not That important. AMD market share should be like 80% at least. Even manufacturing capacity is not problem since AMD could well use others than TSMC too if they are so much ahead and there is demand.
 
HardReset said:
I have been hearing this "efficiency is important on servers" for years. So if AMD really is so much ahead on efficiency while also being cheaper, then AMD should have big lead on server market share, not just less than 30%. Right?

Above means that efficiency is not important on servers. Intel CPU is first and others are much less important aspects.



Then why this oh so important efficiency plays so small role on server market share? Just look at retail market where AMD dominates despite efficiency is not That important. AMD market share should be like 80% at least. Even manufacturing capacity is not problem since AMD could well use others than TSMC too if they are so much ahead and there is demand.
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No one said AMD is "so much ahead". They're currently leading in efficiency. Data centers don't simply switch out one brand for another in existing areas due to instruction set differences. The cost in money and time would be much higher than the energy savings would be. However, many new data centers have chosen AMD.
 
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seeprime said:
No one said AMD is "so much ahead". They're currently leading in efficiency. Data centers don't simply switch out one brand for another in existing areas due to instruction set differences. The cost in money and time would be much higher than the energy savings would be. However, many new data centers have chosen AMD.
Click to expand...

If AMD is ahead on efficiency and TCO, then there are very few reasons to even consider Intel. What are those "instruction set differences"? Intel and AMD mostly have support for same instruction sets. At least those don't make major difference.

Data centers are rarely "upgraged" unless it's very easy processor swap. And not often it is. And if I take your word that new data centers could start from scratch, then why take much more inefficient part?

In the end, efficiency is not important on servers. Just like we saw during Athlon64 Opteron era.
 
HardReset said:
If AMD is ahead on efficiency and TCO, then there are very few reasons to even consider Intel. What are those "instruction set differences"? Intel and AMD mostly have support for same instruction sets. At least those don't make major difference.

Data centers are rarely "upgraged" unless it's very easy processor swap. And not often it is. And if I take your word that new data centers could start from scratch, then why take much more inefficient part?

In the end, efficiency is not important on servers. Just like we saw during Athlon64 Opteron era.
Click to expand...
Fact is AMD is eating intel market share in the data center, this has been true ever since the first Zen EPYC was released.
 
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Cracken said:
Fact is AMD is eating intel market share in the data center, this has been true ever since the first Zen EPYC was released.
Click to expand...
Zen2 launched 2019, since then AMD has only managed to get 33%. Also laptops are also supposed to get advantage of low power consumption, but there situation is even worse.

While AMD has gained market share, pace is molasses. Those things prove that power consumption is not important on servers or laptops.
 
HardReset said:
Zen2 launched 2019, since then AMD has only managed to get 33%. Also laptops are also supposed to get advantage of low power consumption, but there situation is even worse.

While AMD has gained market share, pace is molasses. Those things prove that power consumption is not important on servers or laptops.
Click to expand...
Naturally power consumption plays a role in DC, more so is performance per watt, also AMD leads here.
33% might not sound like much to you personally, yet we are talking billions in revenue. It's the most important market for both company's.
AMD from sub 1% to 33% DC market share in 7 years sounds good to me, and im sure shareholders thinks so to(not intel share holders ofc)
 
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Cracken said:
Naturally power consumption plays a role in DC, more so is performance per watt, also AMD leads here.
33% might not sound like much to you personally, yet we are talking billions in revenue. It's the most important market for both company's.
AMD from sub 1% to 33% DC market share in 7 years sounds good to me, and im sure shareholders thinks so to(not intel share holders ofc)
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's much better than nothing but again, if power consumption Really is important, AMDs figure should be much much higher. Same thing as on laptops, power consumption "should be" important but in reality no-one cares at all.

For this CPU, Intel probably puts so many cores it can fit and power consumption goes 4 figure. And again no-one cares about efficiency. I have seen that countless times.
 
I'm just tired of anytime a company comes out with a new product, it always "leaks" to the internet.
I would bet dollar to doughnut 99% of these "leaks" are done on purpose...free advertising and testing
the waters.
 
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HardReset said:
Yeah, it's much better than nothing but again, if power consumption Really is important, AMDs figure should be much much higher. Same thing as on laptops, power consumption "should be" important but in reality no-one cares at all.

For this CPU, Intel probably puts so many cores it can fit and power consumption goes 4 figure. And again no-one cares about efficiency. I have seen that countless times.
Click to expand...

I think you missed the point about having to wait until it's time to do hardware replacement and get new Servers to replace the old ones when you keep saying that 'power consumption isn't important'. The problem is you can't just say okay go out and get us some new Servers because they are 20% more efficient and we can save several thousand dollars a year by doing it. The budget people then say 'okay but changing out the Servers costs twice that amount so for the next 2 years you have what you have and then we will talk about switching to AMD Servers'.

My old work had pc's with 256mb of memory in them because that's what came with them, I got some used sticks and started upgrading them to just over 1gb of memory and people wanted to know when they were getting the upgrade!! The problem was money and after one Department gave us $70K we were able to bring everyone up to the just over 1gb memory level. People started getting alot more work done and therefore were able to stop paying fines for being late in reporting their data to the Feds. In short that $70K investment saved well over $1 Million dollars in fines.
 
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Freddie159 said:
I think you missed the point about having to wait until it's time to do hardware replacement and get new Servers to replace the old ones when you keep saying that 'power consumption isn't important'. The problem is you can't just say okay go out and get us some new Servers because they are 20% more efficient and we can save several thousand dollars a year by doing it. The budget people then say 'okay but changing out the Servers costs twice that amount so for the next 2 years you have what you have and then we will talk about switching to AMD Servers'.

My old work had pc's with 256mb of memory in them because that's what came with them, I got some used sticks and started upgrading them to just over 1gb of memory and people wanted to know when they were getting the upgrade!! The problem was money and after one Department gave us $70K we were able to bring everyone up to the just over 1gb memory level. People started getting alot more work done and therefore were able to stop paying fines for being late in reporting their data to the Feds. In short that $70K investment saved well over $1 Million dollars in fines.
Click to expand...

I'm not missing the point. If server replacement cycle is 5 years, that basically means 20% per year. That means basically means there should be Very few 2019 servers still running. And even if there is, it should have no effect on sales after 2019.

Your example tells there is much more than just efficiency. Bureaucracy is much more important.
 
HardReset said:
Yeah, it's much better than nothing but again, if power consumption Really is important, AMDs figure should be much much higher. Same thing as on laptops, power consumption "should be" important but in reality no-one cares at all.

For this CPU, Intel probably puts so many cores it can fit and power consumption goes 4 figure. And again no-one cares about efficiency. I have seen that countless times.
Click to expand...
"Better than nothing" is still billions of revenue, meaning AMD has been able to grow and buy several other company's in the process, Xilinx just to name one. It also means that AMD's market cap surpassed Intels for the first time in history. It's a heck of alot more than "better than nothing" its big business.
For this CPU, Intel probably puts so many cores it can fit and power consumption goes 4 figure. And again no-one cares about efficiency. I have seen that countless times
Click to expand...
But apparently you didn't see what happened over the past 7 years.
 
Cracken said:
"Better than nothing" is still billions of revenue, meaning AMD has been able to grow and buy several other company's in the process, Xilinx just to name one. It also means that AMD's market cap surpassed Intels for the first time in history. It's a heck of alot more than "better than nothing" its big business.
Click to expand...

It's miles better than nothing but again, considering how quickly AMD started dominating retail market, AMD market share gain is very slow on servers and laptops. And that tells that either efficiency is not important or there is something wrong with buyers.

Market cap goes up and down all time. However that AMD is even close to Intel tells that manufacturing high end semiconductors is not that profitable anymore. Unless capacities are enormous like on Samsung and TSMC. Also that classic "Intel has own fabs" is not important.

Cracken said:
But apparently you didn't see what happened over the past 7 years.
Click to expand...

Of course I saw. But again, AMDs server share has gone from zero to just OK and laptop share is still trash. Both Should benefit from efficiency greatly but there seem to be other much more important factors. Efficiency seems to be waaay overrated.
 
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