Cisco turns to AMD Epyc for the first time in new UCS model

Cisco has decided its UCS server family needs a new member for dense data centres and edge deployments. Behold, therefore, the “UCS C4200 Platform”, comprising the UCS C4200 Series Rack Server Chassis and the UCS C125 M5 Rack Server Node. The 2U chassis can house four of the servers and 24 disk drives, and offers shared power …

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it called the Anti-trust edition?

Because all the big boys need to have at least on ONE box from AMD to throw as a bone to the monopoly dog when he shows up. Kudo's to AMD for staying in the game, but considering the 10:1 lead on revenue, and 50:1 lead on net income, it's like watching an NFL linebacker take down a Pee-Wee football player over and over.

The linebacker is more worried about accidentally killing the kid then beating him. The plucky underdog keeps running for the end zone though.

Sad thing is they keep out architecting Intel in interesting ways. If they had 5x their R&D budget to stay in the process and fabrication race they might be leading the pack again. The sad thing is they probably could do it with half what Intel is spending. Which is why they are on the 10% diet.

Sad thing is they are gonna get tagged with this Spectre fiasco right out of the starting blocks, so all their releases will be delayed, and under a cloud of negative press.

[Nate Amsden]

Re: Is it called the Anti-trust edition?

If Cisco really cared about that they would of been releasing Opteron 6000 series systems back in ~2010. Speaking of which have to find out at some point if HP is going to continue supporting my DL385G7s (Opteron 6200s) past October of this year or not.

[iPhonePhan]

Re: Is it called the Anti-trust edition?

I love it when people with no understanding of the industry, or clearly the CPU's themselves, feel they can spit as if it were the year 2000.... (hello over there grandpa! good to see you're still kicking!).

Just because CISCO doesn't have an AMD based CPU, it doesn't mean they would be liable to an anti-trust lawsuit. Learn the law.

Second, it's obvious that the AMD EPYC CPUs are fantastic at some workloads, but miserable at others, due to the SoC architecture - I have tested most of the dual and single socket configurations for a range of HPC workloads, and found that they crush Intel on CFD/CAD simulations.

Remember, these R&D departments think long term, and AMD is thinking long term too! It's no secret to see they are playing the long game for a change, and eventually they will steal significant share from Intel, but not with EPYC version 1.

[Daniel von Asmuth]

hot chips

8 sockets holding up to 256 cores (2 threads per core) consuming 1440 kW (not counting rest of the hardware). Wonder what it will cost. Performance would be in TFLOPS range. ... For heavy computing loads one SMP 8-socket box sounds better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hot chips

Whole lotta thinks in this article.

[Nate Amsden]

Re: hot chips

The way you type makes me think you have absolutely no idea how much a 8 socket single system costs, not to mention there are very few such systems on the market anymore (as far as I can tell neither HP (Proliant anyway) nor Dell sell them anymore). Though HP may have 8 socket superdome for HPUX still and of course SGI systems(owned by HP now). HP's last Proliant 8 socket as far as I can tell was 980 which was 7-8 years ago.

[Fenton]

Re: hot chips

Cisco do a C880 (which is actually a OEM Fujitsu), HPE (who now own SGI) and also Atos Bull all do 8 Socket boxes as well as IBM Power

But if you need any sort of high availability you will always need at least two.

If your workload can be split up much better going for smaller nodes with one spare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hot chips

Ok, you clearly have no understanding of hardware... This is built for workloads that don't require large memory or SMP. Think engineering, computational chemistry, rendering, etc... that's also 1.4kW or energy, not 1440 kW! LOL

And NO, an SMP 8-Socket box would have so many more complexities in programming for these environments, and cost at least 4x the price, based on the dominance or those CPU suppliers.