The Intel Xeon Gold 6421N is a server/workstation processor with 32 cores, launched in January 2023, at an MSRP of $2368. It is part of the Xeon Gold lineup, using the Sapphire Rapids-SP architecture with Socket 4677. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 64 threads. Xeon Gold 6421N has 60 MB of L3 cache and operates at 1800 MHz by default, but can boost up to 3.6 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon Gold 6421N on a 10 nm production process, the transistor count is unknown. The multiplier is locked on Xeon Gold 6421N, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 185 W, the Xeon Gold 6421N 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 4400 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. 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 computer, Xeon Gold 6421N 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 Gold 6421N, 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.