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
Testing Notes
For the EPYC launch, AMD sent us their best SKU: the EPYC 7601. Meanwhile Intel gave us a choice between the top bin Xeon 8180 and the Xeon 8176. Considering that the latter had 165-173W TDP, similar to AMD's best EPYC, we felt that the Xeon 8176 was the best choice.
Unfortunately, our time testing the two platforms has been limited. In particular, we only received AMD's EPYC system last week, and the company did not put an embargo on the results. This means that we can release the data now, in time to compare it to the new Skylake-SP Xeons, however it also means that we've only had a handful of days to work with the platform before writing all of this up for today's embargo. We're confident in the data, but it means that we haven't had a chance to tease out the nuances of EPYC quite yet, and that will have to be something we get to in a future article.
Meanwhile we should note that we've had to retire the bulk of our historical benchmark data, as we upgraded both our compiler and OS (see below). Due to this, we only had a very limited amount of time to run additional systems, and for that reason we've opted include Intel's Xeon E5-2690. The Sandy Bridge-EP processor is about 5 years old, and for customers who aren't upgrading their servers every single generation, it's these servers that we believe are most likely to get upgraded in this round. So for server managers looking at finally buying into new hardware, you can get an idea of much return of investment you get.
Benchmark Configuration and Methodology
All of our testing was conducted on Ubuntu Server "Xenial" 16.04.2 LTS (Linux kernel 4.4.0 64 bit). The compiler that ships with this distribution is GCC 5.4.0.
You will notice that the DRAM capacity varies among our server configurations. The reason is that we had little time left before today's launch embargo. Removing any hardware is always a risk, so we decided to run our tests without significantly changing the internal hardware of the systems we received from AMD and Intel (SSDs were still replaced). As far as we know, all of our tests fit in 128 GB, so DRAM capacity should not have much influence on performance. But it wil have a impact on total energy consumption, which we will discuss.
Last but not least, we want to note how the performance graphs have been color-coded. Orange is AMD's EPYC, dark blue is Intel's best (Skylake-SP), and light blue is the previous generation Xeons (Xeon E5-v4) . Gray has been used for the soon-to-be-replaced Xeon v1.
Intel's Xeon "Purley" Server – S2P2SY3Q (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon Platinum 8176 (2.1 GHz, 28c, 38.5MB L3, 165W) |
| RAM | 384 GB (12x32 GB) Hynix DDR4-2666 |
| Internal Disks | SAMSUNG MZ7LM240 (bootdisk) Intel SSD3710 800 GB (data) |
| Motherboard | Intel S2600WF (Wolf Pass baseboard) |
| Chipset | Intel Wellsburg B0 |
| BIOS version | 9/02/2017 |
| PSU | 1100W PSU (80+ Platinum) |
The typical BIOS settings can be seen below; we enabled hyperthreading and Intel virtualization.
AMD EPYC 7601 – (2U Chassis)
Five years after our "Piledriver review", a new AMD server arrives in the Sizing Servers Lab.
| CPU | Two EPYC 7601 (2.2 GHz, 32c, 8x8MB L3, 180W) |
| RAM | 512 GB (16x32 GB) Samsung DDR4-2666 @2400 |
| Internal Disks | SAMSUNG MZ7LM240 (bootdisk) Intel SSD3710 800 GB (data) |
| Motherboard | AMD Speedway |
| BIOS version | To check. |
| PSU | 1100W PSU (80+ Platinum) |
Intel's Xeon E5 Server – S2600WT (2U Chassis)
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2699v4 (2.2 GHz, 22c, 55MB L3, 145W) Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2690v3 (2.3 GHz, 14c, 35MB L3, 120W) |
| RAM | 256 GB (16x16GB) Kingston DDR-2400 |
| Internal Disks | SAMSUNG MZ7LM240 (bootdisk) Intel SSD3700 800 GB (data) |
| Motherboard | Intel Server Board Wildcat Pass |
| BIOS version | 1/28/2016 |
| PSU | Delta Electronics 750W DPS-750XB A (80+ Platinum) |
The typical BIOS settings can be seen below.
HP-G8 (2U Chassis) - Xeon E5-2690
| CPU | Two Intel Xeon processor E5-2690 (2.9GHz, 8c, 20MB L3, 135W) |
| RAM | 512 GB (16x32GB) Samsung DDR-3 LR-DIMM 1866 MHz @ 1333 MHz |
| Internal Disks | SAMSUNG MZ7LM240 (bootdisk) Intel SSD3700 800 GB (data) |
| Motherboard | HP G8 |
| BIOS version | 9/23/2016 |
| PSU | HP 750W (Gold) |
Other Notes
Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) power line. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs.
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alpha754293 - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Pity that OpenFOAM failed to run on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS. I would have been very interested in those results.farmergann - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Are you trying to hide the fact that AMD's performance per watt absolutely dominates intel's, or have you simply overlooked one of, if not the, single most important aspects of server processors?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Neither. We just had very little time to look at power consumption. It's also the metric we're the least confident in right now, as we'd like to have a better understanding of the quirks of the platform (which again takes more time).Carl Bicknell - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Ryan / Ian,Just to let you know there are better chess benchmarks than the one you've chosen. Stockfish is an example of a newer program which better uses modern CPU architecture.
NixZero - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
"AMD's MCM approach is much cheaper to manufacture. Peak memory bandwidth and capacity is quite a bit higher with 4 dies and 2 memory channels per die. However, there is no central last level cache that can perform low latency data coordination between the L2-caches of the different cores (except inside one CCX). The eight 8 MB L3-caches acts like - relatively low latency - spill over caches for the 32 L2-caches on one chip. "isnt skylake-x's l3 a victim cache too? and divided at 1.3mb for each core, not a monolytic one?
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
That's what a 'spill-over' cache is - it accepts evicted cache lines.NixZero - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
so why its put as an advantage for intel cache, which is spill over too?JonathanWoodruff - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Since the Intel one is all on one die, a miss to a "slice" of cache can be filled without DRAM-like latencies from another slice. Since AMD has it's last level caches spread across dies, going to another cache looks to be equivalent latency-wise to going to DRAM. It wouldn't necessarily have to be quite that bad, and I would expect some improvement here for Zen2.Martin_Schou - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
This has to be wrong:CPU Two EPYC 7601 (2.2 GHz, 32c, 8x8MB L3, 180W)
RAM 512 GB (12x32 GB) Samsung DDR4-2666 @2400
12 x 32 GB is 384 GB, and 12 sticks doesn't fit nicely into 8 channels. In all likelihood that's supposed to be 16x32 GB, as we see in the E52690
Dr.Neale - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
I find myself puzzled by the curious omission in this article of a key aspect of Server architecture: Data Security.AMD has a LOT; Intel, not so much.
I would think this aspect of Server "Performance" would be a major consideration in choosing which company's Architecture to deploy in a Secure Server scenario. Especially in light of Recent Revelations fuelling Hacking Headlines in the news, and Dominating Discussions on various social media websites.
How much is Data Security worth?
A topic of EPYC consequence!