The Intel Xeon Gold 6542Y is a server/workstation processor with 24 cores, launched in December 2023, at an MSRP of $2878. It is part of the Xeon Gold lineup, using the Emerald Rapids-SP architecture with Socket 4677. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 48 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to two Xeon Gold 6542Y CPUs can link up in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. Xeon Gold 6542Y has 60 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.9 GHz by default, but can boost up to 4.1 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon Gold 6542Y on a 10 nm production process, the transistor count is unknown. The multiplier is locked on Xeon Gold 6542Y, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 250 W, the Xeon Gold 6542Y 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 5200 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 system, Xeon Gold 6542Y 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 6542Y, 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.