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AMD Hardware Technology

AMD Launches Rome Second Generation EPYC CPUs (anandtech.com) 142

"Today, AMD launched its Rome Second Generation EPYC CPUs, the AMD EPYC 7001 & 7002 series," writes Slashdot reader SolarAxix. "Was the hype real? According to Anandtech's review of the top-of-the-line EPYC 7742 with 64 cores and 128 threads (for a total of 128 cores and 256 threads), it seems to be the case." From the report: ...So has AMD done the unthinkable? Beaten Intel by such a large margin that there is no contest? For now, based on our preliminary testing, that is the case. The launch of AMD's second generation EPYC processors is nothing short of historic, beating the competition by a large margin in almost every metric: performance, performance per watt and performance per dollar. "
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AMD Launches Rome Second Generation EPYC CPUs

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Hopefully both sides will compete with each other, ignore RiscV and then be overtaken when x86 finally dies the death it should have done 10 years ago.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Congratulations to AMD. The hard work is paying off.

    Just remember the original Opteron and Athlon 64. Don't slack off and party for years like a bunch amateurs this time. Keep working hard if you want to keep the lead.

    • by kalpol ( 714519 )
      I've supported AMD always, from the K5/K6 through thick (Slot A) and thin (but hot). I've got a couple of FX-8350s still doing all my heavy pulling (because they were cheap). They are actually pretty awesome processors, just hot as the first circle of Hell. So I'm glad they're still doing clever things under pressure.
      • I am still using such a processor and it's still plenty for me. And I put a big fancy cooler on it. I even have my phenom ii x6 still as a backup. That thing was a beast for the money, too.

      • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        The 8350 is a work horse. I just retired my 8350 from my home server after 6 years of constant use. I didn't retire it because of any form of technical issues. It just couldn't keep up with the increased workload I put on it. It isn't going into complete retirement. I'm going to re-purpose it as a sound mixing station for my son-in-law.

        • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

          I'm running even older hardware, a Thuban. 1090T (6 cores, 3.2 GHz, boost to 3.6, but runs fine 24/7/365 at 3.6). I've added RAM and an SSD and have changed video cards several times in eight years, but this build definitely deserves the "workhorse" moniker. When I originally built it, the intent was to provide enough processor muscle for Cubase, but it turns out Cubase really like clock speed over threads (I think it can only run two threads at a time) and although I get adequate performance, it wasn't as

          • by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @12:34PM (#59063568) Homepage

            Thuban. 1090T

            I remember when that came out. That thing is a beast too. I wanted one but finances being what they where at the time, it just wasn't in the cards.

            I think it's safe to say over the last 10 years if you keep up with technology, we are often disappointed by our expectations. Especially if you came up building systems in the 90's Where a new generation of CPU usually meant double the performance at least over the older systems.

            Over the years we will probably continue to eek out a few more mhz and toss more cores at the problem. But nothing will beat the thrill I had going from a 33mhz '486 to a 100 Mhz pentium.

  • Well done AMD (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lady Galadriel ( 4942909 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @05:46AM (#59061868)
    Kudos, and very well done, AMD. Wish I was in the market for a higher end server, because this beats the lame choices Intel has currently fostered on us. This is similar to some of the high end data center servers.

    I know you won't be able to keep this up, but you have my vote, (via my pocket book). Bought a Ryzen 5 2400G early this year, and am very pleased with it. Cheaper than paying the Intel tax.

    Do hope that AMD is keeping track of all the CPU security issues, and fixing them when possible. (Development pipelines may preclude fixing the latest, but at least get rid of older ones.)
    • Re:Well done AMD (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @06:30AM (#59061944)

      Nope, I got a 2990WX and it sucks bigtime compared to much smaller Intel CPUs in most loads I tried. It works well for C compiles but most C projects build fast enough that speeding them up is not cost-effective. For anything else, that big box chokes under memory and cross-chiplet bandwidth.

      • Re:Well done AMD (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @07:04AM (#59062018) Homepage

        I don't know how much AMD said but Anandtech [anandtech.com] was pretty honest:

        In order to take the full advantage of this setup, the workload has to be memory light. In workloads such as particle movement, ray-tracing, scene rendering, and decompression, having all 32-cores shine a light means that we set new records in these benchmarks.

        In true Janus style, for other workloads that are historically scale with cores, such as physics, transcoding, and compression, the bi-modal core caused significant performance regression. Ultimately, there seems to be almost no middle ground here - either the workload scales well, or it sits towards the back of our high-end testing pack.

        It is a very special chip, with a very special memory configuration. And it was really just the Threadripper chip, all the server chips had local memory. So yeah that's a lemon if you didn't know what you were buying it for, they kick ass in general though and that chip kick ass for a few things - but only a few.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Honestly I know several streamers and other folks that want to utilize lots of add-in cards for external video capture, encoding, etc, that are highly interested in the Epyc series because of that ludicrous amount of PCIe lanes it has.

      When you're trying to juggle a 16-lane GPU, 4-lane for capturing 1080p60 console footage at full 4:4:4 instead of 4:2:0, and another 4-lane for an NVMe SSD alone, you've already blown past what a LOT of modern CPUs on the market can offer without spending thousands.

      At the chea

      • The PCIe is of interest for server/storage as well. The actual flash cost of assembling a fairly large all-flash storage array has fallen remarkably; but SATA/SAS SSDs don't fully exploit the benefits; and NVMe requires a lot of PCIe lanes per unit capacity; which tends to require either overspending on CPUs(either higher SKUs or dual socket for more lanes) or a bunch of the (surprisingly expensive) PCIe switches built into the motherboard or storage backplane.

        Being able to hang a respectable amount of N
      • Indeed. The Intel X99 platform was great, supporting 28 and 40 PCI Express lanes respectively. Too bad I am stuck with the 6800K I bought back in 2016 because of Intel's refusal to reduce prices for the 6900K.

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      I've been very happy with the Ryzen 5 2600X I bought late last year. Good performance and significantly cheaper than comparable Intel offerings. I'm slowly being converted over to AMD, at least for CPUs. Still on the fence with their GPUs though.

    • See above.
    • by DanDD ( 1857066 )

      ... the lame choices Intel has currently fostered on us.

      I think you meant foisted:

      foist /foist/
      verb
      past tense: foisted; past participle: foisted
      impose an unwelcome or unnecessary person or thing on.
      "don't let anyone foist inferior goods on you"

  • My friend and I do ray-tracing, often too large for GPU, so we are interested in Cinebench and Blender raytracing, and yet I didn't see any in the review. Replace "money" with "benchmarks." https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    • by esperto ( 3521901 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @06:28AM (#59061936)
      Phoronix has some Blender benchmarks (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-epyc-7502-7742&num=7 [phoronix.com]) and Intel takes a beating on those (and on pretty much all other tests as well).
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Another shout out for Phoronix and the great service they are giving to the Linux community.

        Phoronix is a great resource for anyone interested in real performance metrics, you can even run the exact same tests yourself and compare your own machine to their results. They run BSD comparisons every now and then which are interesting too. Often they are the first people to show the real impact of security vulnerability patches. The quality of journalism on the regular "tech news" sites has dropped, it was of

  • by Anonymous Coward

    combined they are beating the crap out of Intel. Last time AMD was ahead, Intel had fab advantage. Now AMD is again ahead (or at least paired) in architecture, but Intel is far behind in fab tech. TSMC plans already to go to 5nm. Intel can't reach good 10nm yields. They're going to 7nm in 1-2 years only. They need to spin that off and go fabless ASAP.

    • You really don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I dislike Intel with a passion but anyone inforned knows that their process tech is at least half a generation ahead of TSMC and Samsung and easily a full generation ahead of GF.
      • Uh no. Intel no longer has the advantage over tsmc, their actually functioning processes are basically equivalent at this time. Without a process technology advantage, Intel has nothing since we have already seen that the remainder of their competitive advantage came from compromising security. They clearly have inferior staff working for them, and are clearly mismanaging them to boot. Frankly they should be sued into a smoking hole in the ground for fraudulently claiming that the processor had meaningful s

        • by Anonymous Coward

          AMD is definitely the smarter purchasing choice for the vast majority of people at this point, even for any gamer who isn't a hard-core competitive player. The reason I say that is if you compare buying even a first gen Ryzen versus its price competitive Intel offering in gaming, the Ryzen is now notably better due to the lack of cores on the Intel. Games are utilizing threads better and better.

          Unless you are gaming at 720P with a 2080 ti, buying a Ryzen makes way more sense. The latest ones use much les

          • None of this means Intel is doomed. Intel has fucked up many times in the past and come back stronger from even their earliest days.

            Yeah, but back in those earliest days, they didn't have competition like this. The world has looked very different since the K5.

            On the process mode side, Intel used to be seriously ahead in process technology, but their transition to the next node has been a total disaster.

            Well, that's my point. Intel's technical advantage boiled down to two things, their process advantage and their compromising security for performance. The world is no longer amused at the latter, and they no longer have the former. Plus, there's no indication that they're going to ever have superior process technology again! There is not even a whisper of a rumor of that happening.

      • If this is true, Intel's ability to execute is dismal. According to laptop manufacturers like Apple & Lenovo, the lack of timely Intel product releases and physical product due to yield issues is hurting their bottom lines. Intel is proving to be an unreliable partner, at least in the short-term.

  • supermicro needs to put the aplus link on the main page and stop hiding it. AMD IS KING NOW!!!!

    • They can't retool their designs and factories on a dime. 97%+ of what Supermicro sells right now is Intel-based hardware. That's the bottleneck now, and why you won't see servers based on these new AMD designs go mainstream until next year.
      • You seem to think that Supermicro's "factories" arent just "buildings where minimum wage workers assemble stuff by hand"

        There is no "retooling" at this level because no product of theirs is manufactured long enough to warrant "tools" to be made, and even if they got it in their head to do that, they would then be years late to the market and would immediately go bankrupt at the expense combined with zero money ever coming in for that expense.

        But you know what was once definitely up: Intel colluding with
        • You think components are soldered to high-end motherboards by hand??
          • You think components are soldered to high-end motherboards by hand??

            No, but there's nothing that requires retooling. The parts are positioned by high-precision pick-and-place machines, and then run through a convection reflow oven to solder the parts. The only thing that has to change when the factory produces a different board is the program that tells the pick-and-place machine which parts to put where.

            Creating new mobo designs takes some time, but not much.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @11:50AM (#59063310)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by noodler ( 724788 )

          If they already have the design, then they can switch a production line to make a different board within an hour, and have thousands of them available by tomorrow morning.

          So going by this, they could make 100k boards in about 5 days.

          Then why do you state:

          As a random citizen, I can get 100K boards manufactured in China [pcbway.com] for competitive prices and 6 weeks lead time.

          Are they working 6x slower just for you?

          And how does board complexity play into this?

          Are they really capable of pushing out 10+ layer densely populated motherboards every 3.6 seconds with just one line?

          If so, how do you know? I mean, what is the source of this information?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I think AMD has some mojo going for them, but Intel is a sick company dealing with all the side channel issues coming out more frequently now. How long before hyperthreading must be disabled to fully protect a PC? But the quiet question mark is where is ARM in this competition because as AMD stretches out its cores onto its chips. ARM is quietly making more efficient chips that might just dethrone both AMD and Intel in many markets. ARM is not there yet, but Microsoft, server industry, even Apple are lookin

    • by Junta ( 36770 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @07:41AM (#59062102)

      That story has been developing and recently at least in the EPYC space there is a retreat from it in aggregate.

      AMD, Qualcomm, Cavium, Marvell, and others were all doing 'transform the datacenter' ARM processors (either in production or in development). AMD has discontinued it, Qualcomm's offering was cancelled before it could ever release, Marvell's was stopped and they bought Cavium. Cavium I *think* is still in the game, but they haven't shown anything since ThunderX2 and that did not have the market success many were anticipating. Ampere is currently pushing their acquired Skylark, but to limited success.

      The general problem is that ARM's traditional benefits have not really been relevant to datacenter scale. ARM excelled at offering lower performance chips with lower power envelopes than Intel bothered to offer, and through that heritage went higher performance with both a compatibility advantarge in the mobile space and the market driving them to develop much better sleep state behaviors in their architecture. In the datacenter, sleep states don't matter, the compatibility advantage goes to x86, and it's exclusively about high performance processors and consolodation as the answer to 'too much processor'. The remaining advantage is 'cheap processor' but AMD can apply pricing pressure to a significant extent and otherwise being relegated to a low-cost processor vendor in that space means terrible margins and is going to be unappealing to any manufacturer. The hyperscale datacenters certainly have an interest in the business side of the ARM ecosystem (the ability to have a lot of hungry chip vendors where at least one is willing to take a loss to make a 'big sale', basically what they do to server vendors today), but technically speaking, there hasn't been any sign that there would be an *advantage* to that architecture as of yet.

      • The ARM ISA might be better than x86, but it's not THAT much better than x64. With the addition of the extra registers, ARM doesn't have much to brag about anymore in that area.
    • With 8 cores I don't think Hyperthreading offers any real benefit for 99% of users anyway. They could easily get rid of it in many CPUs, but it would probably affect synthetic benchmarks.
    • Nobody is looking at ARM out of a belief that ARM's next generation chips will be competitive in server racks. They are looking at ARM just in case the next generation is competitive in server racks.

      These two things only sound similar, and dont just assume that either means that ARM might "do something" to be competitive in server racks. If it ever happens, there is only a chance that it will actually be ARMs doing.

      To understand this you need to understand ARMs business model. ARM not only does not manu
  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday August 08, 2019 @08:57AM (#59062380)
    We are 50 posts into new CPU discussion and nobody made a beowulf cluster joke?! This place is circling the drain.
  • I did not personally benchmark the new Epyc CPUs, but Anadtech did [anandtech.com], and had this to say:

    AMD offers you up to 50 to 100% higher performance while offering a 40% lower price. Unless you go for the low end server CPUs, there is no contest: AMD offers much better performance for a much lower price than Intel, with more memory channels and over 2x the number of PCIe lanes.

    Which is a pretty bold claim for them. It has my attention at least.

  • Is this thing threatening cloud? I mean, if you are not huge company, this machine (120 CPU) alone can host your entire enterprise and you will save LOT of money, comparing to AWS/Azure/Google cloud services. Maybe folks will start to move their stuff from cloud to private "cloud" made of single computer? If you use docker already, you can move everything easily.
    • Most small/medium businesses don't need anything bigger. The problem is the cost of administering such box.

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