In case you needed further evidence that an eight-core Coffee Lake CPU would be hitting Intel's desktop platform eventually, there's a new piece of data supporting that supposition. Over at Intel's site, you can find a Dear Customer Letter (DCL) that advises the company's partners regarding sample identification and usage guidelines for a “Xeon E Coffee Lake-S 8C Processor ES.” That'd be an engineering sample for an eight-core LGA 1151 Xeon.
No, the eight-core Coffee Lake CPU rumors we've been hearing about weren't specifically about Xeons, but then they also weren't necessarily about Core processors either. This document at least confirms the existence of such a processor die. Aside from a couple of mobile chips, Intel hasn't even officially launched the Coffee Lake Xeon E-series yet. Given the existence of these engineering samples, it seems we can probably expect that series to include eight-core CPUs at some point.
Historically speaking, the baseline Xeon series—known as Xeon E3 in recent years—has shared the overwhelming majority of its DNA with Intel's desktop CPUs. Thinking along those lines, we can probably expect this eight-core processor to show up on Intel's regular old LGA 1151 desktop platform at some point. The rest of the details are all up in the air even, though we've been hearing about this particular chip since September of last year.
In previous generations, we might have told you to pick up one of the Xeons when they come out and throw it in a low-cost B360 motherboard. That's not going to work anymore, though. Ever since Skylake, Intel has been forcibly segmenting its desktop Xeons onto motherboards bearing C200-series chipsets. Hopefully the consumer version of this chip isn't far behind. Hat tip to HotHardware for pointing out the story at WCCFTech.