AMD Unveils 'EPYC' Server CPUs, Ryzen Mobile, Threadripper CPU and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition GPU (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Today, at its financial analyst day, AMD lifted the veil on a number of new products based on the company's Zen CPU architecture and next generation Vega GPU architecture. AMD CEO Lisa Su lifted a very large server chip in the air that the company now has branded EPYC. AMD is going for the jugular when it comes to comparisons with Intel's Xeon family, providing up to 128 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, which Su says "allows you to connect more GPUs directly to the CPU than any other solution in the industry." EPYC currently scales to 32 cores/64 threads per socket and supports up to 8-channel DDR4 memory (16 DIMMs per CPU, up to 4TB total memory support). AMD also confirmed the previously rumored Threadripper CPU, a 16-core/32-thread beast of a chip for the enthusiast desktop PC space. AMD's Raja Koduri, Senior Vice President and Chief Architect for Radeon Technologies Group, also unveiled Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, a workstation and pro graphics card targeted at VR content creation, visualization and machine learning. Radeon Vega Frontier Edition offers 13 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput, 25 TFLOPS of FP16 performance and is powered by 64 computer units and 16GB of HMB2 memory for about 480GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The cards are expected to ship in June but there was no word just yet on when consumer versions of Vega will hit. Finally, AMD also shared info on Ryzen Mobile, which will incorporate both the Zen CPU architecture and an integrated Vega GPU core. Compared to AMD's 7th generation APUs, AMD claims Ryzen Mobile will up CPU performance by 50 percent while offering 40 percent better graphics performance. AMD also claimed those gains will not come at the expense of battery life, with a 50 percent reduction in power consumption, which reportedly will pave the way for faster, longer lasting premium notebooks and 2-in-1 devices.

Comments

I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not an epyc fayl.

it had to be done

[future assassin]

http://totally.mofo.sexy/mofo/...

Core Wars

[mentil]

Once Threadripper is out, AMD will have a consumer chip with more cores than Intel's top enthusiast chip. Intel's enthusiast chip with the most cores was the ($1600) 6950X with 10 cores, and a 12-core Skylake-X upgrade is expected to release in a few weeks. The big question is pricing on these chips. Once the hype dies down, the question is who really needs these? Professionals who REALLY need to quickly reencode lots of video at maximum quality, or run lots of Photoshop filters, can afford a $1600 chip. That $300 Ryzen with 8 cores will be 'good enough' for nearly everyone who can't afford to spend top dollar, otherwise you should use the EPYC, or the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition.

I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that, so I guess EPYC will be a niche use-case.

Re:Core Wars

[F.Ultra]

I would say that most servers most definitely use more than 4-core CPUs, it's only a small subsection of the Xeon line that have "as low" as 4-cores. 12-22 cores per CPU is the norm on the servers that I administrate which of course say nothing about all the millions of servers in the world, but anyway.

Re:Core Wars

[jawtheshark]

I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that

Then you need to listen to different people. Virtualization for example, needs as much cores as you can get. Transcoding media streams would be another example.

12 Core (2x due to HT) and the four sockets isn't unheard of.

I've seen servers like that basically running each core at 100% 24/7.

Re:Core Wars

[PixetaledPikachu]

I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that, so I guess EPYC will be a niche use-case.

A "server" might only require 4 cores, but nowadays most of them run on hypervisor which runs on top of a cluster of multiple 32 - 80 cores boxes. So yeah, definitely not niche.

Re:Core Wars

[Kjella]

Once Threadripper is out, AMD will have a consumer chip with more cores than Intel's top enthusiast chip. Intel's enthusiast chip with the most cores was the ($1600) 6950X with 10 cores, and a 12-core Skylake-X upgrade is expected to release in a few weeks. The big question is pricing on these chips. Once the hype dies down, the question is who really needs these? Professionals who REALLY need to quickly reencode lots of video at maximum quality, or run lots of Photoshop filters, can afford a $1600 chip. That $300 Ryzen with 8 cores will be 'good enough' for nearly everyone who can't afford to spend top dollar, otherwise you should use the EPYC, or the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that, so I guess EPYC will be a niche use-case.

I'm quite sure the "enthusiast" line of CPUs only exists because all the work is pretty much done for servers. Even paired with extreme high-end graphics cards it's completely unnecessary and people who do the kind of photo / video / rendering / simulation work that can saturate 8+ cores are more prosumers than consumers. But it's a lot better for AMD to offer good value for some than to offer poor value for everyone and it's easier to justify buying something good you might not strictly need. I bought an 1800X even though a quad core would probably be enough, but it's four more cores on the rare occasions I need them, future proofing and a fuck you to Intel's 5% IPC improvements and $1000+ CPU prices.

I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that, so I guess EPYC will be a niche use-case.

Well a lot of servers will naturally trend towards what's the most cost efficient, if we do 100 2x4 core servers or 50 2x8 core servers it's still 800 cores type of thing. I think your information is a little out of date though, if you look at say AWS dedicated pricing they offer servers from 2x10 cores to 4x18 cores. If you need less than that you'd just get a virtualized instance with four cores. They still have high frequency 4/6/8 core CPUs for applications with crazy per-core licensing requirements but they're now the niche, 10 is normal. But there's lots and lots of servers that can't just scale horizontally like that, mostly because "eventual consistency" isn't good enough because either you sold the airplane ticket or you didn't. It won't be for every use, but it has plenty uses.

Re:Core Wars

[CptLoRes]

Don't underestimate the enthusiast gamer willingness to pay top dollar for things they 'don't really need'.

Re:Core Wars

[cheesybagel]

It seems nice to do kernel compiles or any other compilation of large applications. So it could be nice if you are a developer.

Re:AMD, As Always, A Losing Proposition

[MojoKid]

Actually, you have that quite backwards. They've spent the most R&D for these high-end enthusiast chips, on the data center EPYC/Naples architecture which is where the profit margins are. It just so happens that a subset of these chips, when pared down a bit, also works for high-end enthusiast desktop. Ryzen 7 and 5 were developed for desktop. ThreadRipper was born out of Naples/server/EPYC arch, which as you noted is where the money is.

Re:Also consider the thread count as you nap

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it enough to make debug build of webkit?