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
Multi-core SPEC CPU2006
For the record, we do not believe that the SPEC CPU "Rate" metric has much value for estimating server CPU performance. Most applications do not run lots of completely separate processes in parallel; there is at least some interaction between the threads. But since the benchmark below caused so much discussion, we wanted to satisfy the curiosity of our readers.
Does the EPYC7601 really have 47% more raw integer power? Let us find out. Though please note that you are looking at officially invalid base SPEC rate runs, as we still have to figure out how to tell the SPEC software that our "invalid" flag "-Ofast" is not invalid at all. We did the required 3 iterations though.
| Subtest | Application type | Xeon E5-2699 v4 @ 2.8 |
Xeon 8176 @ 2.8 |
EPYC 7601 @2.7 |
EPYC Vs Broadwell EP |
EPYC vs Skylake SP |
| 400.perlbench | Spam filter | 1470 | 1980 | 2020 | +37% | +2% |
| 401.bzip2 | Compression | 860 | 1120 | 1280 | +49% | +14% |
| 403.gcc | Compiling | 960 | 1300 | 1400 | +46% | +8% |
| 429.mcf | Vehicle scheduling | 752 | 927 | 837 | +11% | -10% |
| 445.gobmk | Game AI | 1220 | 1500 | 1780 | +46% | +19% |
| 456.hmmer | Protein seq. analyses | 1220 | 1580 | 1700 | +39% | +8% |
| 458.sjeng | Chess | 1290 | 1570 | 1820 | +41% | +16% |
| 462.libquantum | Quantum sim | 545 | 870 | 1060 | +94% | +22% |
| 464.h264ref | Video encoding | 1790 | 2670 | 2680 | +50% | -0% |
| 471.omnetpp | Network sim | 625 | 756 | 705 (*) | +13% | -7% |
| 473.astar | Pathfinding | 749 | 976 | 1080 | +44% | +11% |
| 483.xalancbmk | XML processing | 1120 | 1310 | 1240 | +11% | -5% |
(*) We had to run 471.omnetpp with 64 threads on EPYC: when running at 128 threads, it gave errors. Once solved, we expect performance to be 10-20% higher.
Ok, first a disclaimer. The SPECint rate test is likely unrealistic. If you start up 88 to 128 instances, you create a massive bandwidth bottleneck and a consistent CPU load of 100%, neither of which are very realistic in most integer applications. You have no synchronization going on, so this is really the ideal case for a processor such as the AMD EPYC 7601. The rate test estimates more or less the peak integer crunching power available, ignoring many subtle scaling problems that most integer applications have.
Nevertheless, AMD's claim was not farfetched. On average, and using a "neutral" compiler with reasonable compiler settings, the AMD 7601 has about 40% (42% if you take into account that our Omnetpp score will be higher once we fixed the 128 instances issue) more "raw" integer processing power than the Xeon E5-2699 v4, and is even about 6% faster than the Xeon 8176. Don't expect those numbers to be reached in most real integer applications though. But it shows how much progress AMD has made nevertheless...
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extide - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
PCPer made this same mistake -- Nehalem/Westmere used a crossbar memory bus -- not a ringbus. Only Nehalem/Westmere EX used the ringbus (the 6500/7500 series) The i7 and Xeon 5500 and 5600 series used the crossbar.extide - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Sandy Bridge brought the ringbus down to Xeon EP and client chips.Yorgos - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
"With the complexity of both server hardware and especially server software, that is very little time. There is still a lot to test and tune, but the general picture is clear."No wonder why we see ubuntu and ancient versions of gcc and the rest of the s/w stack.
Imagine if you tried to use debian or rhel, it would take you decades to get the review.
eligrey - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Why did you omit the Turbo frequencies for the Xeon Gold 6146 and 6144?Intel ARK says that the 6146's turbo frequency is 4.2GHz and the 6144's is 4.5GHz.
eligrey - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Oops, I mean 4.2GHz for both.boozed - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Need more Skylake-SP SKUsrHardware - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
For the purley system, It's listed that you used Chipset Intel Wellsburg B0This information cannot be correct. Lewisburg Chipset is the name of the purley chipset. Also, B0 stepping lewisburg also wouldn't boot with the stepping of CPU you have.
rHardware - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
That 0200011 microcode is also very old.Rickyxds - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
I'am a brazilian processors enthusiast and I'am very critic about intel and AMD processors, between 2012 and Q1 2017 AMD just doesn't existed, who bought AMD on that years, bougth just for love AMD and just it, doesn't for the price, doesn't for the high core count, doesn't for AMD is red, AMD was the worst performance processors. The A9 Apple dual core performance is better than FX 8150.But now I am very surprise with the aggressive AMD prices. No one here Imagined get the Ryzen 7 performance for less than $500. And I don't know if this scenario brings profit to AMD, but for the image against the intel it's wonderful.
On the next years we will see.
krumme - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - link
Thank you for quality stuff article especially given the short time. So thank you for booting up Johan !Interesting and surpricing results.