Intel Xeon 654

The Intel Xeon 654 is a server/workstation processor with 18 cores, launched in February 2026, at an MSRP of $1199. It is part of the Xeon 600 lineup, using the Granite Rapids-WS architecture with Socket 4710. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 36 threads. Xeon 654 has 72 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.1 GHz by default, but can boost up to 4.8 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon 654 on a 5 nm production process, the transistor count is unknown. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on Xeon 654, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 200 W, the Xeon 654 is extremely power hungry, which means you need top-notch cooling. Intel's processor supports DDR5 memory with an eight-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 6400 MT/s. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the system, Xeon 654 uses a PCI-Express Gen 5 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Xeon 654, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, Intel has added support for the newer AVX2 and AVX-512 instructions, too.