AMD has launched its Ryzen-based take on x86 server processors to compete with Intel's Xeon CPUs. All of the Epyc 7000-series CPUs support 128 PCIe 3.0 lanes and 8 channels (2 DIMMs per channel) of DDR4-2666 DRAM:
A few weeks ago AMD announced the naming of the new line of enterprise-class processors, called EPYC, and today marks the official launch with configurations up to 32 cores and 64 threads per processor. We also got an insight into several features of the design, including the AMD Infinity Fabric.
Today's announcement of the AMD EPYC product line sees the launch of the top four CPUs, focused primarily at dual socket systems. The full EPYC stack will contain twelve processors, with three for single socket environments, with the rest of the stack being made available at the end of July. It is worth taking a few minutes to look at how these processors look under the hood.
On the package are four silicon dies, each one containing the same 8-core silicon we saw in the AMD Ryzen processors. Each silicon die has two core complexes, each of four cores, and supports two memory channels, giving a total maximum of 32 cores and 8 memory channels on an EPYC processor. The dies are connected by AMD's newest interconnect, the Infinity Fabric, which plays a key role not only in die-to-die communication but also processor-to-processor communication and within AMD's new Vega graphics. AMD designed the Infinity Fabric to be modular and scalable in order to support large GPUs and CPUs in the roadmap going forward, and states that within a single package the fabric is overprovisioned to minimize any issues with non-NUMA aware software (more on this later).
With a total of 8 memory channels, and support for 2 DIMMs per channel, AMD is quoting a 2TB per socket maximum memory support, scaling up to 4TB per system in a dual processor system. Each CPU will support 128 PCIe 3.0 lanes, suitable for six GPUs with full bandwidth support (plus IO) or up to 32 NVMe drives for storage. All the PCIe lanes can be used for IO devices, such as SATA drives or network ports, or as Infinity Fabric connections to other devices. There are also 4 IO hubs per processor for additional storage support.
AMD's slides at Ars Technica.
Related Stories
AnandTech compared Intel's Skylake-SP chips to AMD's Epyc chips:
We can continue to talk about Intel's excellent mesh topology and AMD strong new Zen architecture, but at the end of the day, the "how" will not matter to infrastructure professionals. Depending on your situation, performance, performance-per-watt, and/or performance-per-dollar are what matters.
The current Intel pricing draws the first line. If performance-per-dollar matters to you, AMD's EPYC pricing is very competitive for a wide range of software applications. With the exception of database software and vectorizable HPC code, AMD's EPYC 7601 ($4200) offers slightly less or slightly better performance than Intel's Xeon 8176 ($8000+). However the real competitor is probably the Xeon 8160, which has 4 (-14%) fewer cores and slightly lower turbo clocks (-100 or -200 MHz). We expect that this CPU will likely offer 15% lower performance, and yet it still costs about $500 more ($4700) than the best EPYC. Of course, everything will depend on the final server system price, but it looks like AMD's new EPYC will put some serious performance-per-dollar pressure on the Intel line.
The Intel chip is indeed able to scale up in 8 sockets systems, but frankly that market is shrinking fast, and dual socket buyers could not care less.
Meanwhile, although we have yet to test it, AMD's single socket offering looks even more attractive. We estimate that a single EPYC 7551P would indeed outperform many of the dual Silver Xeon solutions. Overall the single-socket EPYC gives you about 8 cores more at similar clockspeeds than the 2P Intel, and AMD doesn't require explicit cross socket communication - the server board gets simpler and thus cheaper. For price conscious server buyers, this is an excellent option.
However, if your software is expensive, everything changes. In that case, you care less about the heavy price tags of the Platinum Xeons. For those scenarios, Intel's Skylake-EP Xeons deliver the highest single threaded performance (courtesy of the 3.8 GHz turbo clock), high throughput without much (hardware) tuning, and server managers get the reassurance of Intel's reliable track record. And if you use expensive HPC software, you will probably get the benefits of Intel's beefy AVX 2.0 and/or AVX-512 implementations.
AMD's flagship Epyc CPU has 32 cores, while the largest Skylake-EP Xeon CPU has 28 cores.
Quoted text is from page 23, "Closing Thoughts".
[Ed. note: Article is multiple pages with no single page version in sight.]
Previously: Google Gets its Hands on Skylake-Based Intel Xeons
Intel Announces 4 to 18-Core Skylake-X CPUs
AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
Intel's Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs Have Nasty Microcode Bug
AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
AMD's Threadripper 1950X (TR 1950X?) will have 16 cores for $1,000, and the Threadripper 1920X will have 12 cores for $800. They will be available in early August:
Last night out of the blue, we received an email from AMD, sharing some of the specifications for the forthcoming Ryzen Threadripper CPUs to be announced today. Up until this point, we knew a few things – Threadripper would consist of two Zeppelin dies featuring AMD's latest Zen core and microarchitecture, and would essentially double up on the HEDT Ryzen launch. Double dies means double pretty much everything: Threadripper would support up to 16 cores, up to 32 MB of L3 cache, quad-channel memory support, and would require a new socket/motherboard platform called X399, sporting a massive socket with 4094-pins (and also marking an LGA socket for AMD). By virtue of being sixteen cores, AMD is seemingly carving a new consumer category above HEDT/High-End Desktop, which we've coined the 'Super High-End Desktop', or SHED for short.
[...] From what we do know, 16 Zen cores at $999 is about the ballpark price we were expecting. With the clock speeds of 3.4 GHz base and 4 GHz Turbo, this is essentially two Ryzen 7 1800X dies at $499 each stuck together, creating the $999 price (obviously it's more complicated than this). Given the frequencies and the performance of these dies, the TDP is likely in the 180W range; seeing as how the Ryzen 7 1800X was a 95W CPU with slightly higher frequencies. The 1950X runs at 4.0 GHz turbo and also has access to AMD's XFR – which will boost the processor when temperature and power allows – in jumps of +25 MHz: AMD would not comment on the maximum frequency boost of XFR, though given our experiences of the Ryzen silicon and previous Ryzen processor specifications, this is likely to be +100 MHz. We were not told if the CPUs would come with a bundled CPU cooler, although if our 180W prediction is in the right area, then substantial cooling would be needed. We expect AMD to use the same Indium-Tin solder as the Ryzen CPUs, although we were unable to get confirmation at this at this time.
[...] Comparing the two, and what we know, AMD is going to battle on many fronts. Coming in at $999 is going to be aggressive, along with an all-core turbo at 3.4 GHz or above: Intel's chip at $1999 will likely turbo below this. Both chips will have quad-channel DRAM, supporting DDR4-2666 in 1 DIMM per channel mode (and DDR4-2400 in 2 DPC), but there are some tradeoffs. Intel Core parts do not support ECC, and AMD Threadripper parts are expected to (awaiting confirmation). Intel has the better microarchitecture in terms of pure IPC, though it will be interesting to see the real-world difference if AMD is clocked higher. AMD Threadripper processors will have access to 60 lanes of PCIe for accelerators, such as GPUs, RAID cards and other functions, with another 4 reserved by the chipset: Intel will likely be limited to 44 for accelerators but have a much better chipset in the X299 for IO support and capabilities. We suspect AMD to run a 180W TDP, and Intel at 165W, giving a slight advantage to Intel perhaps (depending on workload), and Intel will also offer AVX512 support for its CPU whereas AMD has smaller FMA and AVX engines by comparison. The die-to-die latency of AMD's MCM will also be an interesting element to the story, depending exactly where AMD is aiming this product.
There's also some details for Ryzen 3 quad-cores, but no confirmed pricing yet.
Meanwhile, Intel's marketing department has badmouthed AMD, calling 32-core Naples server chips "4 glued-together desktop die". That could have something to do with AMD's chips matching Intel's performance on certain workloads at around half the price.
Also at CNET, The Verge, and Ars Technica.
Previously: CPU Rumor Mill: Intel Core i9, AMD Ryzen 9, and AMD "Starship"
Intel Announces 4 to 18-Core Skylake-X CPUs
Intel Core i9-7900X Reviewed: Hotter and More Expensive than AMD Ryzen 1800X for Small Gains
AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
AMD turned a profit last quarter:
2017 has been a great year for the tech enthusiast, with the return of meaningful competition in the PC space. Today, AMD announced their third quarter earnings, which beat expectations, and put the company's ledgers back in the black in their GAAP earnings. For the quarter, AMD had revenues of $1.64 billion, compared to $1.31 billion a year ago, which is a gain of just over 25%. Operating income was $126 million, compared to a $293 million loss a year ago, and net income was $71 million, compared to a net loss of $406 million a year ago. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.07, compared to a loss per share of $0.50 in Q3 2016.
[...] The Computing and Graphics segment has been a key to these numbers, with some impressive launches this year, especially on the CPU side. Revenue for this segment was up 74% to $819 million, and AMD attributes this to strong sales of both Radeon GPUs and Ryzen desktop processors. Average Selling Price (ASP) was also up significantly thanks to Ryzen sales. AMD is still undercutting Intel on price, but they don't have to almost give things away like they did the last couple of years. ASP of GPUs was also up significantly, and the proliferation of cryptocurrency likely played a large part in that. Operating income for the segment was an impressive $70 million, compared to an operating loss of $66 million last year.
When AMD turns a profit, it is news. Stocks still plunged on concerns over future growth. Citi Research has predicted big losses for AMD as Intel ships its Coffee Lake CPUs.
Previously: AMD Ryzen Launch News
AMD GPU Supply Exhausted By Cryptocurrency Mining, AIBs Now Directly Advertising To Miners
AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
Ethereum Mining Craze Leads to GPU Shortages
Used GPUs Flood the Market as Ethereum's Price Crashes Below $150
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and 56 Announced
First Two AMD Threadripper Chips Out on Aug. 10, New 8-Core Version on Aug. 31
Cryptocurrency Mining Wipes Out Vega 64 Stock
AMD Expected to Release Ryzen CPUs on a 12nm Process in Q1 2018
Cray supercomputers with AMD Epyc processors will start shipping in the summer:
Cray is adding an AMD processor option to its CS500 line of clustered supercomputers.
The CS500 supports more than 11,000 nodes which can use Intel Xeon SP CPUs, optionally accelerated by Nvidia Tesla GPUs or Intel Phi co-processors. Intel Stratix FPGA acceleration is also supported.
There can be up to 72 nodes in a rack, interconnected by EDR/FDR InfiniBand or Intel's OmniPath fabric.
Cray has now added an AMD Epyc 7000 option to the CPU mix:
- Systems provide four dual-socket nodes in a 2U chassis
- Each node supports two PCIe 3.0 x 16 slots (200Gb network capability) and HDD/SSD options
- Epyc 7000 processors support up to 32 cores and eight DDR4 memory channels per socket
Top-of-the-line Epyc chips have 32 cores and 64 threads. An upcoming generation of 7nm Epyc chips is rumored to have up to 48 or 64 cores, using 6 or 8 cores per Core Complex (CCX) instead of the current 4.
Related: AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
Intel's Skylake-SP vs AMD's Epyc
Data Centers Consider Intel's Rivals
AMD released Threadripper CPUs in 2017, built on the same 14nm Zen architecture as Ryzen, but with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. Threadripper was widely believed to have pushed Intel to respond with the release of enthusiast-class Skylake-X chips with up to 18 cores. AMD also released Epyc-branded server chips with up to 32 cores.
This week at Computex 2018, Intel showed off a 28-core CPU intended for enthusiasts and high end desktop users. While the part was overclocked to 5 GHz, it required a one-horsepower water chiller to do so. The demonstration seemed to be timed to steal the thunder from AMD's own news.
Now, AMD has announced two Threadripper 2 CPUs: one with 24 cores, and another with 32 cores. They use the "12nm LP" GlobalFoundries process instead of "14nm", which could improve performance, but are currently clocked lower than previous Threadripper parts. The TDP has been pushed up to 250 W from the 180 W TDP of Threadripper 1950X. Although these new chips match the core counts of top Epyc CPUs, there are some differences:
At the AMD press event at Computex, it was revealed that these new processors would have up to 32 cores in total, mirroring the 32-core versions of EPYC. On EPYC, those processors have four active dies, with eight active cores on each die (four for each CCX). On EPYC however, there are eight memory channels, and AMD's X399 platform only has support for four channels. For the first generation this meant that each of the two active die would have two memory channels attached – in the second generation Threadripper this is still the case: the two now 'active' parts of the chip do not have direct memory access.
This also means that the number of PCIe lanes remains at 64 for Threadripper 2, rather than the 128 of Epyc.
Threadripper 1 had a "game mode" that disabled one of the two active dies, so it will be interesting to see if users of the new chips will be forced to disable even more cores in some scenarios.
Oracle puts AMD EPYC in the Cloud
The process of AMD ramping up its EPYC efforts involves a lot of 'first-step' vendor interaction. Having been a very minor player for so long, all the big guns are taking it slowly with AMD's newest hardware in verifying whether it is suitable for their workloads and customers. The next company to tick that box is Oracle, who is announcing today that they will be putting bare metal EPYC instances available in its cloud offering.
The new E-series instances will start with Standard E2, costing around $0.03 per core per hour, up to 64 cores per server, Oracle is stating that this pricing structure is 66% less than the average per-core instance on the market. One bare metal standard instance, BM.Standard E2.52, will offer dual EPYC 7551 processors at 2.0 GHz, with 512 GB of DDR4, dual 25GbE networking, and up to 1PB of remote block storage. Another offering is the E2.64 instance, which will offer 16 cores by comparison.
Related: AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
Data Centers Consider Intel's Rivals
Cray CS500 Supercomputers to Include AMD's Epyc as a Processor Option
AMD Returns to the Datacenter, Set to Launch "7nm" Radeon Instinct GPUs for Machine Learning in 2018
Chinese Company Produces Chips Closely Based on AMD's Zen Microarchitecture
More on AMD's Licensing of Epyc Server Chips to Chinese Companies
TSMC Will Make AMD's "7nm" Epyc Server CPUs
Intel announces Cascade Lake Xeons: 48 cores and 12-channel memory per socket
Intel has announced the next family of Xeon processors that it plans to ship in the first half of next year. The new parts represent a substantial upgrade over current Xeon chips, with up to 48 cores and 12 DDR4 memory channels per socket, supporting up to two sockets.
These processors will likely be the top-end Cascade Lake processors; Intel is labelling them "Cascade Lake Advanced Performance," with a higher level of performance than the Xeon Scalable Processors (SP) below them. The current Xeon SP chips use a monolithic die, with up to 28 cores and 56 threads. Cascade Lake AP will instead be a multi-chip processor with multiple dies contained with in a single package. AMD is using a similar approach for its comparable products; the Epyc processors use four dies in each package, with each die having 8 cores.
The switch to a multi-chip design is likely driven by necessity: as the dies become bigger and bigger it becomes more and more likely that they'll contain a defect. Using several smaller dies helps avoid these defects. Because Intel's 10nm manufacturing process isn't yet good enough for mass market production, the new Xeons will continue to use a version of the company's 14nm process. Intel hasn't yet revealed what the topology within each package will be, so the exact distribution of those cores and memory channels between chips is as yet unknown. The enormous number of memory channels will demand an enormous socket, currently believed to be a 5903 pin connector.
Intel also announced tinier 4-6 core E-2100 Xeons with ECC memory support.
Meanwhile, AMD is holding a New Horizon event on Nov. 6, where it is expected to announce 64-core Epyc processors.
Related: AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
Intel's Skylake-SP vs AMD's Epyc
Intel Teases 28 Core Chip, AMD Announces Threadripper 2 With Up to 32 Cores
TSMC Will Make AMD's "7nm" Epyc Server CPUs
Intel Announces 9th Generation Desktop Processors, Including a Mainstream 8-Core CPU
AMD has announced the next generation of its Epyc server processors, with up to 64 cores (128 threads) each. Instead of an 8-core "core complex" (CCX), AMD's 64-core chips will feature 8 "chiplets" with 8 cores each:
AMD on Tuesday formally announced its next-generation EPYC processor code-named Rome. The new server CPU will feature up to 64 cores featuring the Zen 2 microarchitecture, thus providing at least two times higher performance per socket than existing EPYC chips.
As discussed in a separate story covering AMD's new 'chiplet' design approach, AMD EPYC 'Rome' processor will carry multiple CPU chiplets manufactured using TSMC's 7 nm fabrication process as well as an I/O die produced at a 14 nm node. As it appears, high-performance 'Rome' processors will use eight CPU chiplets offering 64 x86 cores in total.
Why chiplets?
Separating CPU chiplets from the I/O die has its advantages because it enables AMD to make the CPU chiplets smaller as physical interfaces (such as DRAM and Infinity Fabric) do not scale that well with shrinks of process technology. Therefore, instead of making CPU chiplets bigger and more expensive to manufacture, AMD decided to incorporate DRAM and some other I/O into a separate chip. Besides lower costs, the added benefit that AMD is going to enjoy with its 7 nm chiplets is ability to easier[sic] bin new chips for needed clocks and power, which is something that is hard to estimate in case of servers.
AMD also announced that Zen 4 is under development. It could be made on a "5nm" node, although that is speculation. The Zen 3 microarchitecture will be made on TSMC's N7+ process ("7nm" with more extensive use of extreme ultraviolet lithography).
AMD's Epyc CPUs will now be offered on Amazon Web Services.
AnandTech live blog of New Horizon event.
Previously: AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
TSMC Will Make AMD's "7nm" Epyc Server CPUs
Intel Announces 48-core Xeons Using Multiple Dies, Ahead of AMD Announcement
Related: Cray CS500 Supercomputers to Include AMD's Epyc as a Processor Option
Oracle Offers Servers with AMD's Epyc to its Cloud Customers
(Score: 2, Insightful) by EEMac on Thursday June 22 2017, @10:20AM (2 children)
This is what a clear and understandable product launch looks like. All the CPUs have basically the same capabilities. Varying speeds and core counts relates to TDP. Nice!
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:38AM
Indeed. The new Intel lineup is a proper clusterfuck by comparison. No, not even by comparison. It's just a proper clusterfuck.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by fishybell on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:29PM
I don't know. It seems like they may be targeting 16 year old me, rather than dealing with business realities me.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 22 2017, @10:26AM (12 children)
What the shit? What's the big idea of building a CPU that badass, guys? I mean I couldn't figure out how to make it sweat in a gaming rig if I had an unlimited budget and that's always been half the fun of server chips.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:21AM (10 children)
Games are going to be slow to adapt to beyond quad-core, but the major consoles now have 8 cores (~6-8 usable threads), AMD has made the (true) octo-core cheap, and Intel will introduce a mainstream 6-core chip in 2018 (Coffee Lake).
If you need highly threaded software that will tax your 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, or 32 core CPU, I'm sure someone out there has compiled a list.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:35AM (3 children)
Right but half the fun of server chips existing was imagining what a badass gaming rig you could build with one. AMD screwed us on that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:49AM (2 children)
Well, technically the Ryzen "enthusiast" chips stop at 16 cores, and Intel at 18.
I'm not sure what a game could do with 24 or 32 cores (with lower clocks), but maybe there is some crazy procedurally generated game that will scale to 128+ cores.
Maybe AMD didn't ruin the fun but moved the goalposts, giving the software developers a nice kick in the ass.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday June 22 2017, @01:54PM (1 child)
Well , I'm waiting for some benchmarks....hopefully good enough to keep Intel honest....:-/
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday June 22 2017, @02:04PM
Intel's $1,000 10-core chip has been benchmarked against AMD's ~$330-440 8-core Ryzen 7s:
Intel Core i9-7900X Reviewed: Hotter and More Expensive than AMD Ryzen 1800X for Small Gains [soylentnews.org]
Considering that AMD's 16-core Threadripper is rumored to be $849 [wccftech.com], compared to the $1,000 Intel is charging for 10 cores, you can extrapolate from Ryzen 7 1800X and arrive at the conclusion that AMD is about to fuck Intel's shit up, benchmarks be damned.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EvilSS on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:00PM
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday June 22 2017, @06:03PM (4 children)
I write multi-threaded software. My SDR (Software Defined Radio) is currently using 33 threads during SSB (Single SideBand) reception and can use more if certain signal processing options are selected or when receiving wideband FM; my image processing software, on the other hand, determines how many cores there are, and then splits the images into bands (or in a few cases, regions) for processing so unless you've got a CPU with more cores than the image has scan lines, there are cases where they'd be tasked unless you tell the software to specifically limit how many cores it will use (which you can do.)
The real problem for multi-core computing isn't how many cores: The problem is memory bandwidth. Eventually, you get no significant gains because "waiting on memory" dominates over "waiting on instruction cycles."
Eventually, unless the memory bandwidth problem is solved, adding more cores is going to start looking like the "more megapixels" nonsense with the tiny phone sensors. Yeah, you'll have 'em... but they aren't doing you much, if any, good.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:39PM (2 children)
I've said multiple times that my compiles will take at least 8 cores (come on guys, push those tools to 16 now!), and swallow all the DDR bandwidth I can throw at them.
Reasonably-priced 8-channel DDR4? I need a mop before someone slips on the drool puddle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:46PM (1 child)
RTFM [gnu.org] :-)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:14PM
Sadly, there's no open version for my tools. Compiling HW is very specific.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 22 2017, @10:41PM
AMD is rumored [wccftech.com] to be adding High Bandwidth Memory to certain CPU/APU models. Intel has added HBM to Xeon Phi which has over 70 cores. However, stacking memory onto the CPU can cause thermal problems and is expensive. It remains to be seen how widespread HBM will be with CPUs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:45PM
The big "gamer thing" now is streaming + gaming. Encoding video and broadcasting it at the same resolution you're playing at is pretty CPU intensive. On top of that your social gamer stuff like discord (or mumble, teamspeak, ventrilo). A quad could probably do it. But a six (or eight) would be ideal.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Alphatool on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:31AM (2 children)
The new security features [amd.com] on these chips are really interesting too. In particular, the secure memory encryption (making physical attacks on a machine much harder) and secure encrypted virtualization (allowing memory access for virtual machines without the hypervisor being able to read it) will be a big step forward in some environments. It's not perfect, but it's much better than the current alternative, which is nothing.
There is one massive asterisk next to this though - it's fully dependent on a closed source ARM micro controller built into the chip. If there is a vulnerability or a back door in that then it's game over. How much do you trust AMD?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:37AM
About as much as I trust Intel. Which is to say I'm fairly certain they've long since handed the NSA the keys to the kingdom and if not they will be doing so soon.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by iwoloschin on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:59PM
If AMD is paying any attention they'll let big customers review the ARM µC's source code under NDA.