Intel 18A Xeon 6+ Clearwater Forest CPUs Debut With Up To 288 Cores At MWC 2026

AMD isn't the only company launching non-mobile processors at Mobile World Congress 2026. Intel's got some hardware to show off today, too, in the form of the Xeon 6+ processors that we know better by their codename "Clearwater Forest". These chips are the successors to Sierra Forest, the all E-core Xeons that Intel launched back in 2024. Sporting the same Darkmont E-core architecture used in Panther Lake, these processors pack in up to 288 of the little guys as well as 576MB of last-level cache, 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and 12-channel DDR5-8000.


If you were wondering where all of Intel's 18A capacity went, here's a big part of it. The Xeon 6+ processors each have up to 12 compute tiles fabbed on 18A, all of which have six quad-core modules for a total of 24 cores per tile. There are also three 'active' base tiles on Intel 3, so-called because the base tiles include 192MB of last-level cache, which is so-called because each compute tile has 48MB of L3 cache.


Those compute tiles and base tiles are served by a pair of I/O tiles fabbed on Intel 7. These are apparently re-used from the "Granite Rapids" Xeon 6 processors, offering 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes, 32 CXL 2.0 lanes, and 96 UPI 2.0 lanes. Interestingly, the memory controllers actually live on the base tiles, with each base tile offering four 64-bit DDR5 links; that's what gets you the "12-channel" memory (a 768-bit bus width in total.) Those I/O tiles host the workload-specific accelerators, including Intel QuickAssist, Intel Dynamic Load Balancer, Intel Data Streaming Accelerator, and In-memory Analytics Accelerator; there are eight of each on each base tile.


These chips are designed for single-socket or dual-socket operation, which means you could pack up to 576 Darkmont E-cores into a single server. Intel hasn't provided a list of models at this time, and isn't talking clock rates yet, but did promise that the TDPs of these chips would be between 300 and 500 watts, depending on the specific SKU.


There are fewer details available than for the Xeon 6+ chips, but Intel's also promoting its Xeon 6 SoC chips at the MWC event. These parts follow on from previous SoC offerings, going all the way back to Broadwell-DE and the Xeon D family. As usual, they're targeted at the networking and edge segment, designed to support infrastructure rather than crunch AI all day—although they're perfectly capable of that, too, with up to 72 P-cores per chip.


That's "per chip" and not "per socket" because the Xeon 6 SoC processors are BGA mounted, rather than socketed. They include a whole pile of accelerators to help with power efficiency; that includes not just the ones listed above for the Xeon 6+ family, but also Intel vRAN Boost, Intel Media Transcode, Intel AMX matrix math accelerators, and up to 8 ports of Ethernet connectivity at up to 200 Gigabits per second. Intel claims efficiency gains of up to "14x" thanks to these accelerators.


Besides the CPUs, Intel's also showing off its latest Ethernet products at its MWC 2026 booth. The most impressive is still the Intel Ethernet E830 series, capable of up to four ports of 50-Gigabit Ethernet or a single 200-Gigabit link, with PCe 5.0 x8 as the host interface. Crazy transfer rates like this are basically table stakes for modern cluster computing.


Intel says all of this new hardware should be available in the first half of this year, so roughly within the next four months. Of course, for my part, I'm more interested in hearing about Arrow Lake Refresh and Nova Lake, but there's no (official) news on those parts today.