If you thought running at 5 GHz was neat with a 6-core part, Intel had another surprise for you last night. As part of its Computex keynote, the company demonstrated a 28-core processor running at 5 GHz on all cores, planned for the HEDT segment sometime before the end of 2018.

We don't have a lot of detail on this demo, including what socket this is using, whether this is a single monolithic die design or a multi-chip package using EMIB, or if this is will cost you more than your current domicile to purchase.

Image courtesy The Verge

It showed a score of 7334 on Cinebench R15. Think about that – the 18-core Core i9-7980XE is our current stock leader in this test with a result of 3346. That means this 28-core processor demo was 2.19x faster than the current fastest part on the market!! 

Image courtesy Tom's Hardware

All of the unknown factors make it slightly less exciting, to be honest. What power draw was it running at? Is this viable for a consumer platform, in reality? Is 5 GHz a possibility for us mere mortals? Clearly if you are in need of extreme multi-threading capability and performance for rendering, encoding, or mega-tasking, it appears Intel may have the best solution available come this holiday season.

UPDATE 6/6/18: It has now been confirmed by people on the ground in Taipei that the Intel 28-core demo was a complex feat. The motherboards were built by ASUS and Gigabyte, modifications of a server-class LGA3647 socket board that required a 32-phase power system, and a 1HP (horsepower) water chiller and refrigerant to drop the liquid to a cool 4 degrees Celsius. The processor is a single-die part, basically a Xeon Scalable Platinum 8180, that has a list price of $10,000.

Obviously this is not a configuration that any reasonable consumer, even the crazy ones really, would be willing to employ. It means motherboards with the X299 chipset will not be compatible with this part as it requires a new socket. It also means that clock speeds for real-world designs will be much lower, likely a Gigahertz or more. 

There are a lot of questions to poke around about before the end of the year if we are truly going to understand Intel's plans for the enthusiast platform at the end of 2018.