Intel 18A Xeon 6+ Clearwater Forest CPUs Debut With Up To 288 Cores At MWC 2026

AMD isn't the only company launching non-mobile processors at Mobile World Congress 2026. Intel's got some hardware to show off today, too, in the form of the Xeon 6+ processors that we know better by their codename "Clearwater Forest". These chips are the successors to Sierra Forest, the all E-core Xeons that Intel launched back in 2024. Sporting the same Darkmont E-core architecture used in Panther Lake, these processors pack in up to 288 of the little guys as well as 576MB of last-level cache, 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and 12-channel DDR5-8000.

If you were wondering where all of Intel's 18A capacity went, here's a big part of it. The Xeon 6+ processors each have up to 12 compute tiles fabbed on 18A, all of which have six quad-core modules for a total of 24 cores per tile. There are also three 'active' base tiles ...