Intel Announces Sierra Forest Xeon CPU With 288 Cores

Intel's Innovation event is underway today, with the company showing off its latest wares and plans for the future and mentioning "AI" every few minutes. During the Xeon portion of the CEO's keynote, Pat Gelsinger pulled a "one more thing" maneuver by revealing a version of its upcoming Sierra Forest Xeon CPU with 288 E-cores, double the number it had previously made official. As it turns out, those sneaky Intel engineers were able to just drop a second 144-core chiplet on the package, which is reminiscent of when Apple announced the M1 Ultra SoC after not mentioning it had a high-speed interface on its edge that allowed two M1 Max chips to be connected.

Gelsinger revealed the dual-chiplet Sierra Forest chip in today's keynote (YouTube link) and said it was meant to be a surprise. It certainly was, as the 144 E-core version it previously announced seemed ...