[News] Intel Reportedly Kills Off 8-Channel Diamond Rapids as Server Market Shifts to High-Capacity

According to ijiwei, Intel recently raised prices on legacy PC processors like Alder Lake and Raptor Lake. However, the company seems to be taking a different approach with servers. Team Blue has confirmed that 8-channel Diamond Rapids has been removed from the roadmap, with the focus shifting to 16-channel processors and extending their benefits across the stack for a variety of customers, ServerTheHome reveals.

As Tom’s Hardware highlighted in October, 2026 will see Intel rolling out Nova Lake client processors and Diamond Rapids server chips, following the expected launch of Panther Lake mobile CPUs later this year or early next.

However, according to ServerTheHome, the plan for Intel’s next-generation 8-channel Diamond Rapids — successor to the popular Granite Rapids-SP and the mainstream Xeon 6700P/6500P series — has been quietly removed.

ServerTheHome explains that 8-channel platforms allow for more cost-effective motherboards and cheaper server builds, making the Xeon 6700P/6500P series a go-to choice for users who don’t need extreme core counts. This cost-efficiency also gives Intel Xeon a competitive edge over AMD EPYC, offering a lower-cost alternative without sacrificing mainstream performance, the report adds.

Nonetheless, Intel’s removal of the 8-channel Diamond Rapids highlights a broader trend: server platforms are consolidating toward higher-capacity configurations. According to ServerTheHome, high-end server processors will transition from 12-channel to 16-channel memory in H2 2026, combining faster DRAM with more cores and PCIe Gen6 I/O to support AI workloads. This move, as per the report, will put AMD EPYC Venice and Intel Xeon Diamond Rapids on equal footing with 16-channel memory.

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(Photo credit: Intel)