Intel has confirmed that its next-gen Clearwater Forest "Xeon 6+" CPUs are now in full production, targeting a launch this year.
Intel's Next Big 18A Chip Is On Its Way As Full Production of Clearwater Forest "Xeon 6+" CPUs Commenced
Clearwater Forest will be the latest product utilizing the 18A process technology. While the first products, Panther Lake "Core Ultra Series 3" and Wildcat Lake "Core Series 3", aim at the client segment, Clearwater Forest "Xeon 6+" will be positioned within the data center segments, mainly at 6G and Edge AI workloads.
In its latest oneAPI Toolkit briefing, Intel confirms that the oneAPI 2026.0 release offers full support for the Clearwater Forest chips, which are now in full production. In addition, the Clearwater Forest, Intel enables support for its upcoming Crescent Island, Nova Lake, and Diamond Rapids families, too.
The toolkit offers universal support for all Intel platforms, including Xeon, Core Ultra, Arc, and Future GPUs. OneAPI toolkit provides a unified set of compilers, libraries, AI frameworks, and analyzers that are designed to unlock the full performance of Intel hardware.
In terms of specifications, the Intel Xeon 6+ "Clearwater Forest" CPUs will combine four key technologies from Intel: RibbonFET, Power Via, Foveros Direct3D, and EMIB 2.5D. You can read our full breakdown here.
The CPUs themselves will adopt the latest Darkmont E-Core architecture, featuring up to 288 cores in a total of 12 compute chiplets, and additionally feature a massive 576 MB of on-package L3 cache and 288 MB of L2 cache. The CPUs will scale up to a TDP of 450Wm, and will be supported on a LGA 7529 socket in 1S & 2S configurations.
The chips will be able to support up to 12-channel DDR5 memory with speeds of up to 8000 MT/s. In addition to that, the platform will support up to 6 UPI 2.0 links (up to 24 GT/s per lane), up to 96 PCIe Gen5.0 lanes (x16,x8,x4,x2), and up to 64 CXL 2.0 lanes.
In testing by Ericsson, Intel showed that a single Xeon 6990E+ "Clearwater Forest" chip with 288 cores offers 38% reduction in runtime rack power, more than 60% greater perf/watt, and 30% higher overall performance versus a dual socket Xeon 6780E "Sierra Forest" platform with 288 cores. The Clearwater Forest family is expected to arrive later this year.
The Dell PowerEdge R9810/R9820 delivers memory bandwidth up to 12,800 MT/s, doubling the 6,400 MT/s capability of the previous 17th Generation Dell PowerEdge servers. This represents a 2x improvement in memory bandwidth between generations.
8The Dell PowerEdge R9810/R9820, equipped with Intel Diamond Rapids (DMR) P-core CPUs, delivers 50% more CPU cores than the previous generation. While Intel Granite Rapids (GNR) P-core CPUs offer 128 cores per socket, Diamond Rapids scales up to 256.
In the meantime, Intel is also focused on rolling out its next-gen Diamond Rapids P-Core family, which will feature 256 cores in initial variants, and denser compute variants offering up to 512 cores with 16-channel memory. Dell has already announced the R9810 2U server, which features Intel Diamond Rapids CPU, offering double the memory bandwidth, increased cache capacity, and up to 50% increase in core count with PCIe expansion. This platform is expected to be released in 2027, which aligns with recent rumors.
Many thanks to x86 is dead&back for the tip!
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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