Slashdot Mirror
AMD Looks To 'Crush' Intel's Xeon With New Epyc Server Chips (extremetech.com)
AMD has unveiled the first generation of Epyc, its new range of server processors built around its Zen architecture. Processors will range from the Epyc 7251 -- an eight-core, 16-thread chip running at 2.1 to 2.9GHz in a 120W power envelope -- up to the Epyc 7601: a 32-core, 64-thread monster running at 2.2 to 3.2GHz, with a 180W design power. From a report: These chips are built on the same fundamental architecture as the company's Ryzen CPU cores, and they're aimed at the incredibly powerful data center market. AMD's 32-core / 64-thread Epyc CPUs combine four eight-core dies, each connected to the other via the company's Infinity Fabric. According to AMD, this approach is significantly cheaper than trying to pack 32 cores into a single monolithic die -- that approach would leave the company potentially throwing away huge amounts of silicon during its production ramp. The Infinity Fabric is deliberately over-provisioned to minimize any problems with non-NUMA aware software, according to Anandtech. Each 32-core Epyc CPU will support eight memory channels and two DIMMs per channel, for a total maximum memory capacity of 2TB per socket, or 4TB of RAM in a two-socket system. Each CPU will also offer 128 lanes of PCI Express 3.0 support -- enough to connect up to six GPUs at x16 each with room left over for I/O support. That's in a one-socket system, mind you. In a two-socket system, the total number of available PCI Express 3.0 lanes is unchanged, at 128 (64 PCIe 3.0 lanes are used to handle CPU -- CPU communication). Anandtech has a longer writeup with more details on the CPUs power efficiency and TDP scaling. Further reading: ZDNet, press release.
Who knows what Intel might have in their back pocket after chilling around for half a decade? I know benchmarks aren't everything, but at least there's some hope for them wiggling their way back into the server market.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
How do you even pronounce Epyc? Like "epic"?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It looks to me like they finally figured out a small part of something I wrote about more than a decade ago. Too bad I couldn't afford to patent it....
The other point is, Intel's positive re-enforcement loop of having the best processors because they had the most revenues from selling the best processors to develop new processor fabs has been broken by ARM. Competition from ARM architecture drives fab R&D outside of Intel, so much so that Samsung foundries were shipping Qualcomm ARM processors at 10nm while Intel was still stuck at 14nm.
No, Intel just dropped the ball on that (or decided to let go of it). They had an 18-24 month lead and they let TSMC and Apple catch up.
Maybe they decided that dragging out (prolonging the inevitable end of) scaling by 4 years or so would be more profitable between now and 2025 than galloping to the finish line.