UPDATED 14:22 EDT / APRIL 14 2020

INFRA

AMD unveils 3 new Epyc server chips with ‘world’s highest’ core speeds

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today pulled back the curtains on a trio of Epyc central processing units for servers that it says provide the “world’s highest” per-core performance. 

The CPUs, which are launching under the Epyc 7Fx2 brand, are based on AMD’s seven-nanometer Zen 2 architecture. There are 8, 16 or 24 cores per chip depending on the model with base frequencies up to 500 megahertz higher than previous-generation processors.

The increased clock speed isn’t the only contributor to the Intel Corp.-beating performance AMD claims. The chipmaker has also expanded the CPUs’ L3 cache, a type of onboard memory, an upgrade that will allow more data to flow into the circuitry at once and thus speeds processing.

AMD says that a server powered by an Epyc 7Fx2 chip can run SQL databases with up to 17% more performance per core than competing Intel Corp. silicon. A hyperconverged infrastructure appliance, in turn, would be capable of providing 47% better speeds when running VMware Inc. workloads in. High-performance computing systems such as supercomputers are expected to see the biggest speed jump: AMD is promising an up to 94% higher per core boost for computational fluid dynamics workloads.

The better performance has a key practical advantage besides just helping applications crunch data faster. Certain enterprise software products are licensed on a per-core basis, which means that if the individual cores in a server are faster, a company can extract more value from its software investment.

AMD said Dell Technologies Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and a few other data center suppliers are already planning to include the Epyc 7Fx2 in upcoming products. IBM Corp. is making the new processors available to customers via its public cloud.

The Zen 2 core architecture AMD’s current server chips  use will be succeeded by a third-generation design codenamed Milan expected to arrive this year. In a recent presentation to Wall Street analysts, AMD executives detailed that Milan will use a seven-nanometer processor like Zen 2 but will feature an all-new architecture rather than an iterative refinement of the existing design.

Looking further ahead, the company plans introduce a line of five-nanometer server CPUs in 2022. AMD’s long-term roadmap also includes a series of seven-nanometer data center graphics cards and a technology called X3D that will allow it to stack multiple chips atop one another to produce one big three-dimensional processor. 

Image: AMD

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