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.
219 Comments
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Shankar1962 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
AMD is fooling everyone one by showing more cores, pci lanes, security etcCan someone explain me why GOOGLE ATT AWS ALIBABA etc upgraded to sky lake when AMD IS SUPERIOR FOR HALF THE PRICE?
Shankar1962 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Sorry its BaiduPretty sure Alibaba will upgrade
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/...
PixyMisa - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
Lots of reasons.1. Epyc is brand new. You can bet that every major server customer has it in testing, but it could easily be a year before they're ready to deploy.
2. Functions like ESXi hot migration may not be supported on Epyc yet, and certainly not between Epyc and Intel.
3. Those companies don't pay the same prices we do. Amazon have customised CPUs for AWS - not a different die, but a particular spec that isn't on Intel's product list.
There's no trick here. This is what AMD did before, back in 2006.
blublub - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
I kinda miss Infinity Fabric on my Haswell CPU and it seems to only have on die - so why is that missing on Haswell wehen Ryzen is an exact copy?blublub - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
argh that post did get lost.zappor - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
4.4.0 kernel?! That's not good for single-die Zen and must be even worse for Epyc!AMD's Ryzen Will Really Like A Newer Linux Kernel:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&a...
Kernel 4.10 gives Linux support for AMD Ryzen multithreading:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176323/linux/kerne...
JohanAnandtech - Friday, July 21, 2017 - link
We will update to a more updated kernel once the hardware update for 16.04 LTS is available. Should be August according to Ubuntukwalker - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
You mention an OpenFOAM benchmark when talking about the new mesh topology but it wasn't included in the article. Any way you could post that? We are trying to evaluate EPYC vs Skylake for CFD applications.JohanAnandtech - Friday, July 21, 2017 - link
Any suggestion on a good OpenFoam benchmark that is available? Our realworld example is not compatible with the latest OpenFoam versions. Just send me an e-mail, if you can assist.Lolimaster - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
AMD's lego design where basically every CCX can be used in whatever config they want be either consumer/HEDT or server is superior in the multicore era.Cheaper to produce, cheaper to sell, huge profits.