Intel Advances Agentic AI with New Xeon 6+ Processors, Networking, and AI Systems

Intel today announced technical innovations for data center products, including the new Intel® Xeon® 6+ processors, an expansion of the Intel® Ethernet 800 Series portfolio with the addition of the Intel® Ethernet Controller E835 & Network Adapter, and updates on its AI accelerator roadmap, including the next-generation data center GPU (code-named 'Crescent Island'). These announcements reflect a clear industry shift as AI evolves into agentic systems, with the CPU re-emerging as the central hub of modern AI infrastructure. Intel is taking a 'system-first' approach, positioning the Intel® Xeon® processor as the control plane to optimize performance and efficiency across the data center and network environment.

Kevork Kechichian, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Data Center and AI Group, stated, 'AI scales as a system of components working in concert, not as individual parts. As AI becomes agentic, the constraints shift to orchestration, parallel processing, and data movement—a transition that reinforces the fundamental fact that the CPU remains the control plane in modern AI infrastructure.'

The Intel® Xeon® 6+ processor, the first data center CPU to utilize Intel 18A process technology, is designed for cloud-native, agentic AI-driven workloads. It features up to 288 Efficient-cores (E-cores), delivering up to 2.5x performance improvement over the previous generation. Meanwhile, the Intel® Ethernet Controller E835 provides up to 200GbE throughput, ensuring high-performance connectivity for AI and cloud environments. Additionally, Intel introduced a 12-core Intel® Xeon® 6300 series processor for entry-level servers to support small and medium-sized businesses. The next-generation 'Crescent Island' GPU, built on the Xe 3P architecture, supports up to 480GB of LPDDR5x memory, providing the efficiency and scalability required for agentic AI.