back to article AMD takes another crack at Intel's server stronghold with more Epyc silicon

AMD is once again hoping to muscle in on Intel's bread and butter with a new line of second-generation Epyc processors aimed squarely at the HPC, cloud, and enterprise markets. The three server-class chips are designated 7Fx2: the eight-core 180W 7F32 clocked at 3.7-3.9GHz with 128MB of L3 cache; the 16-core 240W 7F52 clocked …

  1. Bronek Kozicki
    Happy

    240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

    I like this chip already, quite a lot. Although maybe not $3,100 much.

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Re: 240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

      And yet AMD is placing the 7F52 against one Intel chip, the 6242, that has a 62.5% lower TDP.

      If the decades-long talk of server room power efficiency is more than just talk, the AMD chip is going to have a lot to prove whilst it eats up that much more power; the AMD would need to present a 65% performance boost over the aforementioned Intel in order to support any increased performance versus power draw claims. That's a pretty massive performance increase to expect, we'll certainly have to see what happens.

      1. Bronek Kozicki

        Re: 240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

        You are comparing apples to oranges; Intel's TDP applies to base frequency only and will be exceeded, by quite a large but unspecified degree, as soon as turbo frequencies kick in (which, for some workloads, could be "all the time"). AMD TDP on the other hand is focused on a removal of waste heat which is perhaps more accurate as it indirectly points to max power, but is also unnecessarily coupled to things like thermal capacity of a cooler. Example discussion here.

        1. Snake Silver badge

          Re: 240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

          https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3525-amd-ryzen-tdp-explained-deep-dive-cooler-manufacturer-opinions

          So AMD picks good sounding numbers and back-computes from there.see

          Intel rates the TDP base after the turbo Tau (just as you state) - in other words, steady state constant. Turbo boosts past that point but, factored in with Tau, you can consider Turbo draw as 'overclock thermal saturation' with a timed after-recovery. AMD has their thermal computation based on tCase - which they can pick per SKU.

          It can almost be comparing apples to oranges.

          As noted in several tech tests and more than a few forum discussions, AMD's core frequency ratings are ' best possible', with few chips actually capable of hitting that mark.

          Contrary to the downvotes I'll FIRMLY stand by my statement: we should await real world tests to see if the chips meet the expectations.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Facepalm

        Re: 240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

        TDP is not power draw. But usually you have to find testers who note the power draw per work load (idle, mixed/specific and full load/powervirus loads).

      3. Piro Silver badge

        Re: 240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

        It's well known that the newest epyc chips are about twice as efficient as intel's equivalent

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 240W 7F52 16 cores at 3.5-3.9GHz with 256MB of L3

          Not that I doubt it, but it would be good to have a link to some reliable tests that demonstrate that - it would help making the point for a budget process. Also, do these better efficiencies already take into account the rather substantial loss of power because of the need to manage the backdoors in Intel chips, or does that come on top of that again?

          Intel is not quite doing a Boeing yet, but it sure isn't having a good time right now. I'm not sorry for them.

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Bronek Kozicki

      Re: Typo surely 8 core low end, 24 core middle and 16 high end ?

      That 16 cores chip comes with 256MB of L3 and 3.5Ghz base frequency.

    2. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Typo surely 8 core low end, 24 core middle and 16 high end ?

      That's the way AMD's done it: in terms of pricing, at least, the 8-core part is the cheapest, the 24-core is the middle, and the 16-core one is the high-end. The expensive one also has more L3 cache and faster core clocks.

      C.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sorry AMD fans...

    ...but the problems with WFH mostly concern comms bandwidth not compute capability. There are other areas AMD must win to steal Intels server space. A shrewd move would be to stick An FC or infiniband controller onto the server board by default. a DC rack power distribution platform is another sensible place to go to steal efficiency and reduce part count over intel equivalents.

    There’s no denying Epyc, Ryzen and Threadripper all resoundly thrash Intel in the CPU department, so differentiators now are in the inertia, servicing and marketing departments. The first two, for better or worse still see intel favoured, but perhaps not for long.

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Sorry AMD fans...

      My Ryzen 3700 is helping me WFH by munching through F@H tasks, whilst still remaining perfectly responsive for work tasks. Turns out 16 threads can get a lot of shit done simultaneously...

    2. rcxb Silver badge

      Re: Sorry AMD fans...

      A shrewd move would be to stick An FC or infiniband controller onto the server board by default.

      Seems like practically all server-class network cards in the past decade have been CNAs, so I don't see a lot of benefit there.

      Server product lines often (but not always) have a longer life than any given network standard, anyhow, so while the 1st gen version of a server released now might be 10GbE or 40GbE, the 2nd gen version in a few years might come with 40GbE or 100GbE (still CNAs) in the base model instead.

  4. msroadkill

    In the cited comparison, intel 1TB of ram, amd 4 tb. Sounds a deal breaker to me.

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