Due to a chip error, the release of Intel Xeon Ice Lake-SP server processors will be delayed at least until the middle of 2Q 2021
Some of the theses presented by industrial analysts during a presentation for the private trading firm Susquehanna International Group became available to the general public. It follows from them that Intel has problems with the server CPU of the Ice Lake-SP generation, which should compete with AMD EPYC Milan.
In particular, the Ice Lake-SP release has been postponed again due to an error in the chips, as reported by several sources at once. Now we are talking about the release of new products in the middle to the end of the second or early third quarter. It also reported that productivity did not increase significantly. In addition, in the release versions, the maximum number of cores in the chip has been reduced from 38 to 36. The competitor in the face of EPYC Milan based on Zen 3, the announcement of which will probably take place before Ice Lake-SP, will offer at least the same 64 cores in the maximum configuration as in the Rome generation.
Moreover, Milan is expected to compete with Sapphire Rapids, Intel’s next-generation server processor, whose release was pushed back from Q2 2021 to Q2 2022. By this time, if everything goes according to plan, AMD will have time to prepare the next generation of CPUs, EPYC Genoa. Intel will be able to answer it in 2023 with Granite Rapids processors. In general, if both companies do not have any significant changes in the implementation of their plans, Intel will be able to catch up with AMD only in 2024-2025, analysts say.
