Intel Xeon 6505P 12c/24t 2.2GHz-4.1GHz 150W (PK8072006398700)

Intel Xeon 6505P Processor for Entry-Level Granite Rapids Servers

The Intel Xeon 6505P is one of the entry points into the Xeon 6 “Granite Rapids” stack, but it is not a low-end chip in practical terms. With 12 cores and 24 threads, 2.2 GHz base frequency and boost up to 4.1 GHz, it targets modern cloud and enterprise environments that need predictable performance per core, solid parallel throughput and efficient power use in dense racks.

Belonging to the Xeon 6 line, the 6505P is designed around the Granite Rapids platform with eight DDR5 channels and PCIe 5.0. For operators running mixed workloads — from containerized microservices and API backends to small-scale databases and message brokers — this combination provides a balanced profile: there is enough core count to consolidate multiple services on a node, while relatively high turbo clocks keep single-threaded latency under control.

A key aspect of the 6505P is the memory subsystem. Support for eight channels of DDR5-6400 with up to 4 TB per socket means the platform is not limited by memory bandwidth as quickly as older DDR4-based systems. For customers transitioning from previous Xeon Scalable generations, this alone can deliver noticeable improvements in database responsiveness, in-memory caching performance and analytics queries that are sensitive to memory throughput rather than raw CPU cycles.

The I/O capabilities also reflect current datacenter trends. With 88 lanes of PCIe 5.0, the 6505P can handle several NVMe SSDs, fast network adapters and accelerators without quickly running out of lanes or saturating the bus. In practical designs this allows, for example, to dedicate part of the PCIe budget to high-speed storage arrays while still reserving bandwidth for SmartNICs or DPU cards used in modern cloud networks and security stacks.

From a capacity planning perspective, the 150 W TDP is an important parameter. It lets integrators fit the 6505P into air-cooled 1U or 2U servers with a predictable thermal profile, which simplifies rack-level design in colocations and edge sites. Compared to more aggressive SKUs with significantly higher TDP, this model offers better density for scenarios where power per rack or per row is constrained and where the limiting factor is not peak compute but the total number of nodes.

In terms of typical workloads, the Xeon 6505P is suitable for control plane services, moderate-scale web and application tiers, CI/CD infrastructure, monitoring and logging stacks, internal business applications and as a building block for small Kubernetes clusters. It can also be used as a dedicated node for network functions virtualization, where the balance between clock speed and core count is often more important than maximal throughput at any cost.

For customers who plan a phased migration to Xeon 6, the 6505P works well as an entry configuration that can be deployed today and then complemented by higher-core Granite Rapids parts in the same generation. This approach simplifies lifecycle management and keeps the stack homogenous at the platform level (socket, memory, I/O), which helps with firmware baselines, OS images and automation templates.