Sizing Up Servers: Intel's Skylake-SP Xeon versus AMD's EPYC 7000 - The Server CPU Battle of the Decade?
by Johan De Gelas & Ian Cutress on July 11, 2017 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Intel
- Xeon
- Enterprise
- Skylake
- Zen
- Naples
- Skylake-SP
- EPYC
Intel’s Skylake-SP Processors: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze
In a break from the traditional naming scheme that Intel has used for several generations, we saw the move to Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze SKUs for Skylake-SP. We’re told there is no real conversion between the two, and to some extent Intel is correct: it’s almost impossible to correlate what the conversion from the old chip naming is to the new chip naming is, but also Intel has decided to awkwardly complicate what the numbers in the middle mean, with no real direct pattern to follow on some of the digits. This is the diagram provided:
Aside from the name (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze), the four digits indicate SKU level, Generation, and then a pair of digits for general performance level. After this there are a series of potential suffixes:
- M = Supports 1.5 TB DRAM per socket, up from 768GB as standard
- T = High T-Case, Extended Life
- F = Integrated OmniPath Fabric
This leads to the following lists for the processors. We have sorted these into numerical order, which may be different to Intel’s pricing or specification lists. First up is the Platinum parts, geared for up to 8-Socket use.
Xeon Platinum
So what is the "Platinum" all about? We were told at the briefing:
"One of the reasons for this is that sometimes a customer could take advantage of an 8-socket variant processor (due to high cache per core, for example), but would never consider it because the customer only needed a two-socket configuration. One of the reasons given for the naming is to alleviate this issue."
There is no longer an E7, but if you look at the prices ($3000-$13000) and features, the Xeon Platinum is clearly the successor to the E7. There is support for up to 8 sockets, and most of the Platinum SKUs have 24 to 28 cores, and is clearly using the XCC silicon.
Intel Xeon Skylake-SP Platinum Series | ||||||||||
Segment | Cores | Base (GHz) |
Turbo (GHz) |
L3 (MB) |
L3/core (MB) |
TDP (W) |
Price (USD) |
|||
8180 | Per-Core | 28 | 2.5 | 3.8 | 38.50 | 1.375 | 205 | $10009 | ||
8180 | M | 2xDRAM | 28 | 2.5 | 3.8 | 38.50 | 1.375 | 205 | $13011 | |
8176 | Perf/Watt | 28 | 2.1 | 3.8 | 38.50 | 1.375 | 165 | $8719 | ||
8176 | M | 2xDRAM | 28 | 2.1 | 3.8 | 38.50 | 1.375 | 165 | $11722 | |
8176 | F | OmniPath | 28 | 2.1 | 3.8 | 38.50 | 1.375 | 173 | $8874 | |
8170 | Perf/Watt | 26 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 35.75 | 1.375 | 165 | $7405 | ||
8170 | M | 2xDRAM | 26 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 35.75 | 1.375 | 165 | $10409 | |
8168 | Per-Core | 24 | 2.7 | 3.7 | 33.00 | 1.375 | 205 | $5890 | ||
8164 | Perf/Watt | 26 | 2.0 | 3.7 | 35.75 | 1.375 | 150 | $6114 | ||
8160 | Perf/Watt | 24 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 33.00 | 1.375 | 150 | $4702 | ||
8160 | M | 2xDRAM | 24 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 33.00 | 1.375 | 150 | $7704 | |
8160 | T | 10yr Life | 24 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 33.00 | 1.375 | 150 | $4936 | |
8160 | F | OmniPath | 24 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 33.00 | 1.375 | 160 | $4856 | |
8158 | Per-Core | 12 | 3.0 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 2.063 | 150 | $7007 | ||
8156 | Per-Core | 4 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 16.50 | 4.125 | 105 | $7007 | ||
8153 | Perf/Watt | 16 | 2.0 | 2.8 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 125 | $3115 |
I suppose the first thing to note is the pricing. If you want the extended DRAM version of the 28-core CPU, be prepared to shell out $13k for the tray pricing. That is almost 2x the cost of the highest-end previous generation part, and becomes a sizeable chunk of any build. The standard DRAM support version is ‘only’ $10k. For anyone around the $7-8k per CPU budget, like last generation, you can still get a 28-core processor in the form of the 8176, or 8170 if you can give up a couple of cores.
With the double DRAM supported parts, the 30% premium seems rather high. We were told from Intel that ‘only 0.5% of the market actually uses those quad ranked and LR DRAMs’, although that more answers the fact that the base support is 768GB, not that the 1.5GB parts have an extra premium.
This pricing seems crazy, but it is worth pointing out a couple of things. The companies that buy these parts, namely the big HPC clients, do not pay these prices. They’ll likely pay under half these prices, and probably much less. Nonetheless, this is still a sizeable jump over the last generation – exact pricing for the top tier customers will be in their contracts, but it has been predicted by some analysts that there might be a small outcry, even from Intel’s largest customers.
A few users might be confused about the Platinum 8156, a quad core part at $7007. This is a high cache/core part, offering 4.125 MB of L3 per core, up from 1.375MB per core for the standard parts. Intel has offered these parts for a few generations now, for customers that find their code to be L3 sensitive or have licensing agreements base on per-core/per-socket as well. What customers will have to note is that Skylake-SP has a different L3 cache compared to previous generations, by being a non-inclusive cache (and essentially a victim cache) means it will be used very differently. With a larger L2 cache as well, the L3 might become less important, or the fact it becomes a victim cache might make it useful/useless on the code. For customers after these sorts of cores, it is worth profiling the code on the CPU first, just to make sure.
Xeon Gold
Despite some of the nuance, the Platinum processor list is easy to follow, especially by comparison to the Gold list. The Gold processors are technically split into two groups, the Gold 6100 series, and Gold 5100 series: split in their DRAM and AVX-512 support, as well as the number of UPI links.
The Gold 6100-series will have 2 FMA units per core rather than one, showing that the Port-5 FMA is enabled and can feed the AVX-512 unit better for up to 2x performance. (This is similar to what we saw with the consumer Skylake-X parts, where >10-core parts have both FMAs enabled.) The 6100-series also has DDR4-2666 support, whereas the 5100-series is limited to DDR4-2400 as standard.
There’s also a matter of UPI links to other processors. This matters when these processors are in a quad-socket system: with only 2 UPI links for the 5100-series, that means the processors are in a ring arrangement, rather than a hatch-arrangement, and to access data on the opposite side of the ring requires two hops, rather than the one hop on the hatch. This is perhaps a niche issue, but one worth taking note of.
Intel Xeon Skylake-SP Gold Series | ||||||||||
Segment | Cores | Base (GHz) |
Turbo (GHz) |
L3 (MB) |
L3/core (MB) |
TDP (W) |
Price (USD) |
|||
6154 | Per-Core | 18 | 3.0 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 1.375 | 200 | $3543 | ||
6152 | Perf/Watt | 22 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 30.25 | 1.375 | 140 | $3655 | ||
6150 | Per-Core | 18 | 2.7 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 1.375 | 165 | $3358 | ||
6148 | Per-Core | 20 | 2.4 | 3.7 | 27.50 | 1.375 | 150 | $3072 | ||
6148 | F | OmniPath | 20 | 2.4 | 3.7 | 27.50 | 1.375 | 160 | $3227 | |
6146 | Per-Core | 12 | 3.2 | 4.2 | 24.75 | 2.063 | 165 | $3286 | ||
6144 | Per-Core | 8 | 3.5 | 4.2 | 24.75 | 3.094 | 150 | $2925 | ||
6142 | Per-Core | 16 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 150 | $2946 | ||
6142 | M | 2x DRAM | 16 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 150 | $5949 | |
6142 | F | OmniPath | 16 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 160 | $3101 | |
6140 | Perf/Watt | 18 | 2.3 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 1.375 | 140 | $2445 | ||
6140 | M | 2x DRAM | 18 | 2.3 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 1.375 | 140 | $5448 | |
6138 | Perf/Watt | 20 | 2.0 | 3.7 | 27.50 | 1.375 | 125 | $2612 | ||
6138 | T | 10yr Life | 20 | 2.0 | 3.7 | 27.50 | 1.375 | 125 | $2742 | |
6138 | F | OmniPath | 20 | 2.0 | 3.7 | 27.50 | 1.375 | 135 | $2767 | |
6136 | Per-Core | 12 | 3.0 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 2.063 | 150 | $2460 | ||
6134 | Per-Core | 8 | 3.2 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 3.094 | 130 | $2214 | ||
6134 | M | 2x DRAM | 8 | 3.2 | 3.7 | 24.75 | 3.094 | 130 | $5217 | |
6132 | Per-Core | 14 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 19.25 | 1.375 | 140 | $2111 | ||
6130 | Perf/Watt | 16 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 125 | $1894 | ||
6130 | T | 10yr Life | 16 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 125 | $1988 | |
6130 | F | OmniPath | 16 | 2.1 | 3.7 | 22.00 | 1.375 | 135 | $2049 | |
6128 | Per-Core | 6 | 3.4 | 3.7 | 19.25 | 3.208 | 115 | $1691 | ||
6126 | Per-Core | 12 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 19.25 | 1.604 | 125 | $1776 | ||
6126 | T | 10yr Life | 12 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 19.25 | 1.604 | 125 | $1865 | |
6126 | F | OmniPath | 12 | 2.6 | 3.7 | 19.25 | 1.604 | 135 | $1931 | |
5122 | Per-Core | 4 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 16.50 | 4.125 | 105 | $1221 | ||
5120 | Perf/Watt | 14 | 2.2 | 3.2 | 19.25 | 1.375 | 105 | $1555 | ||
5120 | T | 10yr Life | 14 | 2.2 | 3.2 | 19.25 | 1.375 | 105 | $1727 | |
5119 | T | 10yr Life | 14 | 1.9 | - | 19.25 | 1.375 | 85 | $1555 | |
5118 | Perf/Watt | 12 | 2.3 | 3.2 | 16.50 | 1.375 | 105 | $1273 | ||
5115 | Perf/Watt | 10 | 2.4 | 3.2 | 13.75 | 1.375 | 85 | $1221 |
Why all those differences between the two grades of Gold did not result in a separate "grade" for the 51xx is beyond me. For example, for the HPC people, the 51xx gets you slower DRAM and half the FP peak performance. The only logical way to describe the Gold grade is "the 4 socket version with wildly varying features".
Xeon Silver and Xeon Bronze
After 16 CPUs for Platinum and 32 CPUs in Gold, the Silver and Bronze parts only have 10 in total. These parts support two sockets at most, and only up to 12 cores, showing that Intel’s market segmentation strategy has changed significantly here. In the last generation, a customer could get a dual-socket high-core-count part like the E5-2699A v4 without the need to look at 8-socket parts, but now Intel has that limited such that you have to look at Gold or Platinum processors to play in this space.
As with the Gold 5100 series, these Silver and Bronze parts only have 1 FMA per core for the AVX-512. The Silver parts support DDR4-2400, hyperthreading, and UPI at 9.6 GT/s (down from 10.4 GT/s on Gold), compared to the Bronze CPUs that use DDR4-2133, no hyperthreading, the slower UPI, but also slower in general – peak frequencies are at 1.7 GHz with AVX-512 at 0.8 GHz.
Intel Xeon Skylake-SP Silver and Bronze Series | ||||||||||
Segment | Cores | Base (GHz) |
Turbo (GHz) |
L3 (MB) |
L3/core (MB) |
TDP (W) |
Price (USD) |
|||
4116 | Perf/Watt | 12 | 2.1 | 3.0 | 16.50 | 1.375 | 85 | $1002 | ||
4116 | T | 10yr Life | 12 | 2.1 | 3.0 | 16.50 | 1.375 | 85 | $1112 | |
4114 | Perf/Watt | 10 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 13.75 | 1.375 | 85 | $694 | ||
4114 | T | 10yr Life | 10 | 2.2 | 3.0 | 13.75 | 1.375 | 85 | $773 | |
4112 | Perf/Watt | 4 | 2.6 | 3.0 | 5.50 | 1.375 | 85 | $473 | ||
4110 | Perf/Watt | 8 | 2.1 | 3.0 | 11.00 | 1.375 | 85 | $501 | ||
4109 | T | 10yr Life | 8 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 11.00 | 1.375 | 70 | $501 | |
4108 | Perf/Watt | 8 | 1.8 | 3.0 | 11.00 | 1.375 | 85 | $417 | ||
3106 | Perf/Watt | 8 | 1.7 | - | 11.00 | 1.375 | 85 | $306 | ||
3104 | Perf/Watt | 6 | 1.7 | - | 8.25 | 1.375 | 85 | $213 |
Overview
It is worth noting that Intel’s documents, such as the price lists do not list these parts in numerical order. At times the higher core count part will be listed higher than a lower core count part with more cache/frequency, and this will be non-obvious, especially when quick glancing. In general, the higher the number, the higher the raw performance is (Cores, frequency), but this does not always hold true.
The Platinum 8170 (165W) has only 2 cores (8%, 26 vs 24) more than the 8168 (205W), but the latter has an almost 30% higher frequency (2.7 vs 2.1). So maybe the higher the number, the better the performance/watt? This doesn’t hold either, because the 8164 (150W) runs 26 cores at a 2 GHz. The Gold 6144 and 6142 look very similar, but the former is an 8-core at 3.5 GHz (with 25 MB of L3), while the latter is a 16-core at 2.6 GHz (with 22 MB L3).
The new numbering and grade scheme has some merits, but there are still too many exceptions to rely on it. Especially the Gold grade having two sets of parts, and the last two numbers are not logical at all. You will still need to decipher every SKU at ark.intel.com to know what you are buying.
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tmbm50 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Windows licensing is irrespective of virtualization.If you run a vm with a single vCPU on a server with 32 cores, you must license all 32 cores. KVM, ESXi...doesnt matter.
I'm sure most folks ignore that point in the license but if your an enterprise and get audited it's enforced.
nils_ - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
Oracle does the same, and if your environment supports migration to other hosts you'd have to license those too (just in case). It's sort of criminal really.pepoluan - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
I wonder, though, how does AWS managed to offer per-instance Windows licensing for EC2?Because, by that logic, EVERY Windows instance needs to be licensed against ALL cores in an Availability Zone...
Rοb - Sunday, July 23, 2017 - link
From very brief research it looks like for you're in for $6K per 16 Cores for the Datacenter Edition, trying to run the Software on a 4S 32 Core would cost 64x as much (excluding any Bulk Buy pricing you might be able to request).If you bought SM Fat Twins everything would be separated with less loss of density; for the money saved on Licensing would it pay off.
You want to conduct your business lawfully and can charge the customer what it costs plus profit - that's what it costs, want something different the price will probably be different.
Most Software that has per Core Licenses costs a fair bit and has thought it out so someone can't (lawfully) buy a single License and then run the Software on a much more powerful machine.
Take a deep breath and consider that if you ran it on a Phi x200 in x86 Mode that it would run slowly and you'd be charged for 256 Cores per CPU - so don't do that.
I don't want to sound unsympathetic but if the Vendor didn't make money then they wouldn't have incentive to write the Software.
Convince your customers to switch to free Software or for those prices write your own.
What is the complaint exactly, have a Rack Unit Fee, an Electricity Fee, a CPU Fee, a Software Fee, etc., and tell the customer that XYZ costs that much but if they get WYZ it will only cost so much instead.
Assuming everyone obeys the Law and pays the same for Electricity, Cooling, Electronics, Software and Labor then it's only the percentage of Profit where the difference in price lies - or in other words someone will always charge less (and not be 'audited' / as honest / as intelligent and hard working as your Team).
Let the people who you buy your Software from know your complaint and options, we can't be of much more help to you other than the years of service some of us devote to free and pay Software.
rocky12345 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Great article as always I found it very well written and there was a lot of information to take in. It was good to see AMD chips doing this good. Bang for the buck seems to be in AMD's court in both the server market and consumer markets now.To those saying oh in the real world big companies would not be upgrading there software to the latest because of money that may be lost. You guys have a solid point there. BUT these tests are not being done in a real world company that depends on their servers to be up 100% of the time. These are just in house tests done to benchmark the new CPU's so yes the latest and greatest versions of the software can be & should be used. This shows exactly what the new CPU's can do when the software is updated to support the latest and greatest hardware. DO you actually think a huge company when buying new server clusters asks for software that is 5 -10 years olds I am fairly sure they do not. They want the most update to date software that is optimized for the new hardware they are spending big bucks on. They want it to be 100% stable and they also want the latest and greatest because of the fact that they probably will never update the software again or at least not for 5-7 years or more. So testing with old builds of software is very unrealistic and does not show the hardware at it's best and also not what a company is looking fro when buying new hardware.
With that said this is still a great write up and deserves a lot of praise.
rahvin - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
I think it's a great comparison article too, you know it's pretty unbiased when both the Intel and AMD fanboi's are out in force criticizing the article for bias.My main comment is that Intel is crazy with those prices on the platinum chips. Those prices are easily two times the previous generation. This is the result of AMD being absent from the server market, that is Intel running processor prices up to the prices that Sun, IBM and HP used to charge in the worst of the enterprise server days. $13k for a Xeon, you've got to be shitting me.
Here's to hoping AMD mops the floor with them and causes prices to crater just like the last time Opteron was competitive. I remember the days when the highest end Xeon was less than $1000. These days the bottom end Xeons are pricing at $1000 and the high ends are 13X that much. Again, I pray AMD can get 25% market share and knock these prices back into reasonable territory. I also hope AMD makes a ton of money and can keep it up with competitive designs (even if it is doubtful because their management is garbage).
Rοb - Sunday, July 23, 2017 - link
Rahvin writes: "$13K for a Xeon ...".There's more to it than that, read the Fine Print; Intel has all kinds of expensive/inexpensive (depending upon your point of view).
See this Comparison: https://ark.intel.com/compare/120498,120499 .
Which is "less expensive":
Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180M Processor (28 Cores) for $13,011.00
or
Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8156 Processor (4 Cores) for $7,007.00
So which is less 13 or 7 vs. 28 or 4?
You can't just look at one number.
There are other Technical Points, AMD doesn't have: AVX-512, OmniPath 400Gbps, 8-way Motherboards, etc.
If you MUST have what Intel offers then there's only one choice, if you can work around those things and get along with AMD then you're saving money.
If you wanted bleading edge performance then you'd be looking at Spark or Power; some complain that would deny the ability to play Crysis (and that due to their importance people stay up worrying about their issues).
Which is "best" is often easy to say given a narrow definition, which is best in every possible circumstance can be more of a challenge.
Disclaimer: I don't work at either place and intend to buy Epyc 7nm.
hahmed330 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Jolly Good! AMD just smoked Intel's bacon!Impressive showing! Outstanding just outstanding!
Shankar1962 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Yeah thats why AMD is still in losses and Intel is making net profits of ~$11billion plus each yearThey are gaining share by trying to sell their so called top products for cheap prices
Wondering who is getting smoked
PixyMisa - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
Epyc has been out for three weeks.