Intel's top Xeon 7 Diamond Rapids part will ship with 256 performance cores, according to a claim posted on X by hardware leaker Jaykihn on 8 August 2026. That figure matches the core count of AMD's flagship EPYC 9996 Venice, which went on sale in July. It also sits 64 cores above the number Intel described from its own stage at the VLSI Symposium in Honolulu in June, where the company laid out a four-tile design totalling 192 cores. One person's post is the whole basis for the higher figure.Where The 256-Core Figure Came FromAbout The AuthorAt heart, I am a storyteller drawn to the watershed moments that bend the technology landscape. I braid narrative with data, humanise statistics, and trace the arc from first spark to world-changing impact. My reportage, features and reviews are witty, sardonic, visual and vivid, using anecdote to illuminate rather than eviscerate.
As a technology journalist with over sixteen years of experience, I have travelled the world and the seven seas, covered every major tech conference worth its lanyard, chronicled the defining breakthroughs of the last decade and a half, and played a pivotal role in launching some of India’s most important technology publishing platforms across web, print and TV.
