AMD's Future in Servers: New 7000-Series CPUs Launched and EPYC Analysis
by Ian Cutress on June 20, 2017 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Enterprise CPUs
- EPYC
- Whitehaven
- 1P
- 2P
AMD’s Reach and Ecosystem
As mentioned at the top of the piece, the big launch for AMD this year is the server platform. EPYC has an opportunity to reinvigorate AMD’s bottom line to the tune of several billion dollars a year, if they can get traction in the market. Depending on which Analyst you speak to, some are predicting anywhere from a 5% to a 25% gain in market share for AMD, into a ~$25B total addressable market. Given AMD’s worth, that would mean that the balance sheet in a few years might look as if 80% of it is provided by the server team.
As part of the launch today, AMD is announcing partners working with them to optimize the platform for various workloads. Sources say that this includes all the major cloud providers, as well as all the major OEMs. We saw several demo systems at the launch event with partners as well, such as HPE and Dell.
Using SME/SVE with Samsung
The variety of internal systems used by AMD for the demonstrations (some Dell/HP logos)
Security Demonstration
Using 8 VMs to compile the Linux Kernel in one go on AMD vs Intel 2P systems
Of course, the big question is if AMD is actually getting in significant orders for processors. Nothing is public on that yet, and we are told that they are likely to be nearer the end of the year. We are eagerly waiting to test the processors when our review systems arrive, and we will provide our performance breakdown soon.
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patrickjp93 - Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - link
And Intel's ability to optimise exceeding LLVM's and GCC's is certainly not cheating. Perhaps Google, Apple, Microsoft, and GNU could catch up instead of bitching.deltaFx2 - Thursday, June 22, 2017 - link
"And Intel's ability to optimise exceeding LLVM's and GCC's" Complete and utter strawman. Nobody's questioning that icc is a good compiler. Plenty in HPC pay good money for icc. It's not nearly as good as SPEC suggests though because of stuff that is pretty much if (signature of libq, mcf, etc detected) { special codepath that nobody else uses/needs }. At issue is not whether icc is a better compiler but whether icc is also a fair compiler to use on benchmarks like SPEC. It's not, thanks to Intel's shenanigans with the compiler. The reason llvm and gcc don't have this is because they're not interested in selling chips (which intel is); they're interested in improving the average workload. Special casing libquantum doesn't align with those priorities.Luckz - Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - link
So they've only been cheating in the decade or so before, and they've been saints for 3 years, except they cheat at libquantum to inflate their SPEC scores, purely on merit. Yeah.willis936 - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
Just wow. Finally a chip worthy of the "HEDT" moniker.nevcairiel - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
Except its not anything like that. Its a server chip, not any end of the desktop/workstation spectrum.Gothmoth - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
well at work i have a two socket system under my desk that uses server CPU´s.vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
>well at workYou mean like a work ... station with a workstation class CPU?
Drumsticks - Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - link
Probably, meaning exactly the kind of chip that nevcairel (who gothmoth replied to) implied that it wasn't.spikebike - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
This is a server chip, likely not as nice to use as a HEDT targeted chip like threadripper. The threadripper is likely to have fewer cores, faster clocks, and half the memory bandwidth... but more cores, and double the bandwidth of the Ryzen.vision33r - Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - link
Typical novice user response that more is better.