Slashdot Mirror
AMD Offers Full Details and Performance of Zen-Based Naples Server Platform (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: AMD lifted the veil this morning on architecture details and performance expectations of its next generation Zen-based server platform, codenamed Naples. Naples is an up to 32-core, 64-thread variant of Zen, targeted at enterprise and data center applications. The processors will feature eight-channel DDR4 memory controllers (with up to 16 DIMMs attached per CPU), with support for up to 4TB of memory and 128 lanes of on-chip PCI Express connectivity. In a 2P (dual processor/dual socket) configuration, Naples offers up to 64 physical cores (128 threads), access to 32 DIMM slots, and aggregate 16 memory channels. Versus a 2P Intel Xeon E5-2699A V4 based server, the 2P Naples setup ends up with double the memory channels, a higher total memory capacity, more cores (20 more physical cores, 40 more threads), and 48 more available PCI Express lanes. AMD's performance comparisons at its tech day event pit a 2P Naples server with 512GB of DDR4 RAM up against a 2P Intel Xeon E4-2699A V4 configuration with 384GB of RAM. The Naples system had a higher memory capacity and that memory was clocked much higher too -- 2400MHz versus 1866MHz. The Naples system has more cores, and with SMT on, can ultimately process more threads as a result. The AMD Naples system also has double the memory channels, further improving peak memory bandwidth. In its demos, AMD used a seismic analysis workload, which involved multiple iterations of 3D wave equations. According to AMD, the test taxes the entire system, including CPU cores, memory and I/O. In this demo, the AMD server system completed equations roughly 2.5x faster than the dual-socket Intel Xeon server. Expected price points weren't given, but Naples processors and servers should be available in Q2 this year.
Chattanooga tried to set up a city owned ISP a few years ago because the local monopoly was terrible, and the state government legislated to prevent them doing it.
That's what happens when money dominates politics.
There is a massive benefit in situations such as a lot of parallel tasks using the same dataset shared in memory. I/O only matters with getting things in and out and a lot of tasks are CPU bound instead of I/O bound. The demo task they used, processing of seismic data, is a good example of that sort of task. Think of things like applying the exact same filter to a few million audio tracks for an idea of how parallel the tasks can be, and think of mixing based on location and time of millions of audio tracks to get an idea of how good it is to do it all on the same machine with shared memory.
Chattanooga did set up a city owned ISP, EPB, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga. EPB offers some of the fastest, most reliable, Internet service at extremely competitive prices. So when EPB began thinking about expanding to other underserved communities in the Chattanooga area, it was a real threat to the incumbent duopoly: Comcast and AT&T.
The Tennessee legislature couldn't prevent Chattanooga from setting up its own ISP, but what they could do is prevent EPB from expanding their service area beyond the city limits. So areas just outside Chattanooga have some of the slowest Internet service, and it's all thanks to lobbyists for AT&T. Thank you, Tennessee Republican legislature, for protecting the profits of AT&T by protecting them from competition by a city owned utility.
Still rare, still expensive, still fragile, still hard to service and upgrade, still not worth it except for some edge cases.
Quad (and octa) core servers are the moon rockets of IT. Yes, they do exist. No they are not common. Only for very, very special missions.
He said 'rare' not 'nonexistent'
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
It doesn't magically become not corruption when it becomes legal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A proper comparison would be between AMD's 2017 cpu Naples against Intel's 2017 cpu E5 V5 not 2016 E5 V4, as is done here.