Intel is gearing up for a return to the high-end desktop (HEDT) workstation market with the launch of the "Granite Rapids-WS" Xeon processors. A well-known hardware leaker, @momomo_us, has provided a list of potential SKUs, detailing their L3 cache capacities and clock speeds. At the top of this preliminary list is a SKU labeled 698X, featuring 336 MB of L3 cache and a clock speed of 2.0 GHz across all cores. The lower clock speed suggests this could be a higher-core SKU, though this is yet to be confirmed. The Granite Rapids-WS design is based on Intel's XCC server compute dies, incorporating two compute tiles that deliver up to 86 cores and two I/O tiles for connectivity, including PCIe and memory controllers. To exceed 86 cores, Intel would likely need to adopt the larger UCC die and a bigger package.

The specifics of memory support for the workstation SKU are still uncertain. However, the server XCC family supports DDR5-6400 and can achieve higher effective speeds with MR-DIMMs. For workstations, Intel is likely to opt for an eight-channel memory configuration to balance capacity and board complexity, although a 12-channel memory setup is also possible. The Granite Rapids-WS processors are derived from Intel's server XCC dies, allowing for a quicker path to higher core counts in workstations. These "Granite Rapids" server dies are modified with a new socket and package. Intel manufactures the I/O die for Granite Rapids on the Intel 7 node, while the compute tiles are produced using Intel 3.