Last year, Intel canceled the 8-channel variant of its upcoming Diamond Rapids server lineup, choosing instead to focus on only the 16-channel SKUs. The "Xeon 7" family was originally supposed to launch later this year, but new information from leaker Jaykihn suggests it's been pushed back to 2027. That means Diamond Rapids won't be able to compete directly with AMD's EPYC Venice CPUs that're (still) slated for 2026.

The leak also says, at launch, the Diamond Rapids family will top out at 256 cores (all P-cores), but 512-core silicon will follow a few months later, both featuring 16-channel memory. That means up to 1.6 TB/s of throughput thanks to MRDIMM 2 support. The P-cores inside Diamond Rapids will be using the "Panther Cove-X" architecture, and both the 256- and 512-core lineups are rumored to be compatible with the LGA9324 socket.

Diamond Rapids will be the last Xeon generation without hyperthreading support, as the next-gen Coral Rapids lineup is said to bring back SMT. Speaking of which, Coral Rapids is apparently planned for a mid-2028 launch and will begin with 8-channel variants. However, the rollout can be called up and accelerated in response to market demand, as stated in Intel's recent quarterly earnings call. Beyond that, details on Coral Rapids and its specs are currently nonexistent.

Lastly, the post above claims Clearwater Forest is due in the first half of 2026. As a reminder, Clearwater Forest is the successor to the existing Sierra Forrest lineup, which features only E-cores, but with major upgrades. It's classified as the Xeon 6+ platform, meant to bridge the gap between Xeon 6 and Xeon 7 (Diamond Rapids). As such, it's manufactured on the Intel 18A node and features up to 288 Darkmont E-cores. It supports 12-channel DDR5-8000 memory.

Most of this information isn't official, so exercise caution before taking it at face value. With Intel's roadmaps being as unclear as they are, a lot can change between now and even the second half of the year when Diamond Rapids was originally supposed to launch. In contrast, AMD's EPYC Venice and Verano lineups seem remarkably stable, with the former on track for launch later this year and the latter in 2027.

You'll notice we didn't talk about the Arc Xe graphics mentioned in the leak — that's because we've already covered that in detail in another post. With all the focus on data centers and AI, consumer products such as dedicated gaming GPUs keep getting sidelined, but at least the CPU side of things for the mainstream segment isn't as affected. Nonetheless, it's shaping up to be a fierce server battle between the Red and Blue Teams in the coming years.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.