Intel seems ready to take inspiration from AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology to implement it in its next server processors, leaving desktop PCs out. A new Intel processor, called “Clearwater Forest”will in fact incorporate advanced technologies such as Foveros Direct 3D, RibbonFET, PowerVia and EMIB 3.5D, as well as a 3D cache called “Local Cache”. Intel’s Florian Maislinger revealed this in an interview with der8auer and Bens Hardware (which you can watch on YouTube).
Florian Maislinger, head of technology communications at Intel, revealed during the interview that the company is working on an ambitious project for 2025: a new server/workstation processor that will include “tile cache” to increase shared L3 cache. This improvement will aim to compete with AMD’s EPYC “Genoa-X” and future “Turin-X” processors, which are particularly popular for their ability to handle technical calculations and cache-sensitive applications.
Intel has no plans to bring capabilities similar to AMD’s 3D V-cache to its desktop processors.
Clearwater Forest will be made with the 18A production process, on which CEO Pat Gelsinger has focused heavily. It will use the Atom Darkmont cores, successors to the Skymonts present in the Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processors. The architecture features three active “base tiles”, each containing four CPU chipletsfor a total of 12 CPU chiplets connected via Hybrid Bonding. The complete package is expected to contain nearly 300 billion transistors. On the sides there are two I/O chiplets connected to the CPU tiles through 3.5D EMIB technology.
AMD has already scored a point in favor with their “Genoa-X” processors, featuring 3D V-Cache stacked on their “Zen 4” CCD cores. This configuration has shown a significant performance advantage in software such as the Ansys suite and OpenFOAMused for complex simulations. Intel, recognizing the growing importance of a larger cache, aims to replicate these results with a solution adapted to its hardware, but exclusively for the server sector, at least in the short term.
As for desktop processors, the expectations of gamers and high-end users may be disappointed. Maislinger in fact explained that gaming “it’s not an extremely large mass market” for Intel. The company sells many CPUs not necessarily intended for gaming. He added: “We still have this technology (stacked 3D cache). This means that next year there will be a CPU (Clearwater Forest) with a tile cache for the first time, but not on the desktop.”
Although Intel Foundry owns the technology to compete with AMD’s 3D V-Cacheas demonstrated by Clearwater Forest, the company therefore has no intention of making it mainstream in the near future.
However, the company did not stand idly by: Intel has identified some issues that would have limited performance in the gaming sector and is already working on corrective solutions. Possible interventions could include microcode updates or optimizations at the operating system level.
Source: www.tomshw.it
