Intel Starts Shipping Ice Lake Xeon CPUs, Promises More Cores

Intel has started shipping production versions of its third-generation Xeon Scalable processors, code-named Ice Lake, saying that the new chips will bring “significant increases in core count,” among other things.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company made the disclosure during its virtual CES 2021 keynote and said production of the processors — the first to use the chipmaker’s 10-nanometer process — are slated to ramp up over the course of the first quarter.

[Related: Hedge Fund Urges Intel To Explore Going Fabless, Selling ‘Failed Acquisitions’]

This comes after the company delayed production shipments of the processors from last year, giving a head start to AMD, which said last October that it was on track to begin volume shipments for its third-generation EPYC processors, code-named Milan, by the end of 2020.

“Today marks a significant milestone for Intel as we continue to accelerate the delivery of our 10nm products and maintain an intense focus on delivering a predictable cadence of leadership products for our customers,“ said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel, in a statement. “Our 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable platform represents a strategic part of our data center strategy and one that we’ve created alongside some of our biggest customers to enable the data center of tomorrow.”

In addition to significantly increasing the core counts, Intel said the new Ice Lake processors will also bring big gains in performance, integrated AI and security.

“It will enable our cloud, enterprise and networking customers to deploy innovative solutions such as next generation cloud services that strengthen data privacy and AI video analytics and microservices at the edge,” said Gregory Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Client Computing Group, during the company’s CES keynote.