An Interview with Intel's Kira Boyko: Xeon 6's Product Director

George CozmaJun 12, 20261011ShareHello you fine Internet folks, today we have an interview with Kira Boyko, the Product Director of Intel Xeon 6+. Hope y’all enjoy! Transcript below has been edited for conciseness: George Cozma: Hello, you fine internet folks. We’re here at Computex 2026 at the Intel booth, or booth-room-floor area, whatever you want to... George Cozma: Yeah, well, whatever you want to call it. And I’m here with... Kira Boyko: I’m Kira Boyko, and I am the product director for Intel Xeon 6+, which we have just launched at the event this week. George Cozma: Now, starting off with a kind of simple question: what is a product director? Kira Boyko: That is a good question. Actually, I get asked that somewhat frequently. A product director is someone who defines what the product is going to look like. So we look at the market requirements, what segments you want to target, how you want the product to perform, the different KPIs, and then you work all the way through to execution and delivery to make sure we are staying on track to our customers’ needs. George Cozma: So are you actively saying, okay, this product needs to have at least X number of cores at X clock speed for X performance? Kira Boyko: With X frequency, X application for this segment is going to need this KPI of performance. It needs to be able to support this and that, and this other part doesn’t matter. And then, working with our customers, of course, to answer those and understand their various applications, we build out models to ensure that we are supporting those appropriately. George Cozma: Cool. And speaking of models, I assume you also are part of the SKU-ing, the people who decide what goes into, let’s say, the 6990...90+...E-Plus?... George Cozma: And then, like, the SKUs down there, all the way down to the, I believe, the 6960E+. George Cozma: And so you determine what the gaps are and all that, or...? George Cozma: Okay. How are you doing all that? Are you just asking your customers what they want, or are you sort of just deciding through what can be cut down from different yields and whatnot? Kira Boyko: It’s a combination of all the above. So it’s looking at all of our segments, understanding what those segments are going to need from an application perspective, and then determining how we best create SKUs to fit that. And then, of course, to your point, there is a lot of looking at the overall utilization to ensure that we are hitting our marks in terms of demand on a per-SKU basis. But yeah, we try to keep it as simple as possible. Xeon 6+ has a simpler roadmap, which I’m particularly proud of, because Xeon honestly has a huge number. Yes. And we’re going to see a lot of crossover and application between some of our segments there, which is also going to help with the overall build and supply so that we have more material available for folks down the road to choose from. George Cozma: Okay, excellent. And sort of, I guess, since you’re working with your customers, where in the design segment do you come in? Do you come in sort of as the product is being defined? So I guess before launch, how far back are you sort of involved? George Cozma: Okay, okay. So you’re sort of at the beginning. Kira Boyko: Yes. Okay, yeah. The product manager actually starts out with the full product concept, or product kickoff, as well, right? So you start by saying, hey, this is what we need to deliver in this time frame. This is what we’re hearing from our customers. And then you start working with an architect and various other engineers to actually figure out how you’re going to build this and achieve it. George Cozma: Okay. Now, sort of moving into Xeon 6+, the thing that really interested me the most was AET. Could you talk a little bit more about what that is, what the acronym is, and what that gives you over standard performance counters? Kira Boyko: And we love a really good acronym. It is Intel Application Energy Telemetry, which you hopefully have, like, a sub-caption below this saying that, because... George Cozma: I was like, when I first wrote it, I thought it was Advanced Energy Telemetry. I was like, wait... Kira Boyko: I like that. I mean, sure, we can go with that too. I like that. George Cozma: Should be XET. It didn’t just sort of fall into the everybody-has-an-X stuff. Kira Boyko: That, and maybe a plus at the end, you know, just to make it super fun. George Cozma: Or throw Ultra in the box as well. Kira Boyko: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a new feature that we are introducing with 6+ that will be rolling out on all of our Xeons moving forward. So that’s important to know because, while 6+ is very focused on specific scalar workloads, we will have other CPUs, of course, that are focused on others, where this is going to be equally applicable. It is a feature that was highly requested by some of our customers. So we developed that alongside feedback throughout the process. And it allows them to track

An Interview with Intel's Kira Boyko: Xeon 6's Product Director

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