Specifications
Model Numbers
Xeon 6990E+ · 6980E+ · 6970E+ · 6960E+
Codename
Clearwater Forest
Process Node
Intel 18A (RibbonFET GAA transistors, PowerVia backside power delivery)
Packaging
Foveros Direct 3D, glass core substrate, laser-etched through-glass vias
Core Type
Darkmont efficiency cores (E-cores), no hyper-threading
Xeon 6990E+
288 cores / 288 threads · 2.2 / 3.2 GHz · 2.8 GHz all-core turbo · 576 MB L3 · 450 W
Xeon 6980E+
264 cores · 2.1 / 3.2 GHz · 2.7 GHz all-core · 528 MB L3 · 400 W
Xeon 6970E+
192 cores · 2.3 / 3.2 GHz · 3.0 GHz all-core · 480 MB L3 · 400 W
Xeon 6960E+
144 cores · 2.4 / 3.2 GHz · 3.0 GHz all-core · 432 MB L3 · 330 W
Low-Power Bin
288-core 330 W configuration (1.7 / 3.2 GHz, 2.4 GHz all-core)
Memory
12-channel DDR5-8000
PCIe Lanes
96 × PCIe 5.0
CXL
64 × CXL 2.0 lanes
UPI
6 × UPI 2.0 lanes
Socket Compatibility
Single- and dual-socket (576 cores per 2-socket system)
Accelerators
Up to 16 — 4 × Intel QAT, 4 × DLB, 4 × DSA, 4 × IAA
Security
1024 Intel TDX keys per CPU
Intel AET
Intel Application Energy Telemetry supported
Platform
Xeon 6900 series AP (accelerated processor) platforms
Predecessor
Xeon 6700E / 6900E Sierra Forest
Benchmark Claim
Xeon 6990E+ reported 30 % faster per thread than 192-core AMD EPYC 9965
Overview
Intel Xeon 6+ Clearwater Forest is the second generation of Intel's E-core-only server family and the first high-volume data center processor built on Intel 18A. It brings RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery into shipping silicon, packaged with Foveros Direct 3D on a glass core substrate — the first commercial CPU to use laser-etched through-glass vias for tile-to-tile interconnect.
The four catalogued SKUs are Xeon 6990E+ (288 cores, 576 MB L3, 450 W), 6980E+ (264 cores, 528 MB L3, 400 W), 6970E+ (192 cores, 480 MB L3, 400 W) and 6960E+ (144 cores, 432 MB L3, 330 W), plus a 288-core 330 W low-power bin for density-constrained fleets. All share 12-channel DDR5-8000 memory, 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 64 CXL 2.0 lanes and 6 UPI 2.0 links, with up to 16 bundled accelerators across QAT, DLB, DSA and IAA.
The pitch is cloud-native and scale-out throughput rather than per-core single-thread performance: 288 E-cores per socket, 576 per dual-socket system, and 576 MB of last-level cache on the flagship mean this is a head node for containerised web tiers, microservice meshes, CDN origin, network function virtualisation and dense AI inference fan-out rather than a general-purpose database CPU. It drops into the Xeon 6900 AP platforms that already carry Sierra Forest, so existing hyperscale chassis, memory population rules and cooling designs carry over — and the 330 W bin keeps it valid for air-cooled racks where the 450 W part would need liquid.
Key Benefits
Up to 288 E-cores per socket / 576 per 2-socket system for container and VNF density. 576 MB L3 keeps working sets resident and cuts DRAM round-trips. 12-channel DDR5-8000 raises memory bandwidth per core at high core counts. Intel 18A with PowerVia improves perf-per-watt at the tile level. Platform-compatible with Xeon 6900 AP boards already qualified for Sierra Forest. 16 onboard accelerators offload crypto, compression, queueing and telemetry without a PCIe card.
Applications
Hyperscale and cloud-native container farms; network function virtualisation and 5G core; CDN origin and edge caching tiers; dense AI inference fan-out and feature serving; microservice and stateless web tiers; data-plane telemetry and stream processing; AGI-adjacent scale-out jobs where thread throughput beats clock speed.
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