Here's Intel's 34-Core Raptor Lake-S Wafer Inadvertently Leaked At Innovation 2022
At Intel's Innovation event, we snapped a picture of a curious wafer that the company had on display. It was labeled as "Raptor Lake-S," but upon even a cursory examination, it became obvious that it is no ordinary Raptor Lake desktop CPU wafer. Instead, it appears to be a 34-core monster workstation CPU.
Looking at one of the dice in detail, we can count 34 P-cores, including some on the outer edges of the CPU. The efficiency or "E-cores" used in Alder Lake and Raptor Lake silicon come in clusters, and would have a different appearance—and are completely absent here. Given that all of this CPU's cores look the same, we can presume they're all Golden Cove or Raptor Cove P-cores.
These are massive chips, far too big to fit in a desktop ("-S") socket, so the "Raptor Lake-S" label on the carrier is clearly wrong. The mind boggles to think how such a label could have gotten onto the carrier, though. You might think that the wrong wafer was simply stuck in a carrier meant for an actual Raptor Lake-S wafer, but it specifically says "Raptor Lake-S, 34 core".
The layout is reminiscent of Intel's Ice Lake-SP Xeons, which topped out at 28 cores. Just like those chips (and all of Intel's high-core-count CPUs), these appear to use a mesh interconnect between their 34 cores. The "Raptor" nomenclature is curious; it was found on a sticker on the outside of the wafer carrier, but we don't know what core architecture this CPU is using.
The Raptor Lake-S CPUs that Intel announced come with eight P-cores and sixteen E-cores; Intel hasn't announced anything like this monster 34-core CPU. 34 cores isn't enough for Intel's top-end Xeons, so it's likely that this model is intended for the workstation market, or possibly the triumphant return of the high-end desktop (HEDT). Whatever the case, the booth staff certainly didn't know.
