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
Pricing Comparison: AMD versus Intel
We are all hoping that the renewed competition between Intel and AMD results in more bang for the buck. Intel just launched about 50 SKUs, so we made a list of those that will go head-to-head with AMD's already announced EPYC SKUs. On average, the Intel SKUs will priced slightly higher, reflecting the fact that Intel believes buyers are willing to pay a bit more for the vendor with the better track record.
| AMD EPYC Processors (2P) | Intel Xeon Processoors (2-8P) | ||||||
| AMD EPYC SKU |
Cores |
Freq (GHz) Base-Max |
Price | Intel Xeon SKU |
Cores | Freq (GHz) Base-Max |
Price |
| Xeon 8180 (205W) | 28 | 2.5-3.8 | $10009 | ||||
| Xeon 8176M (165W) | 28 | 2.1-3.8 | $11722 | ||||
| Xeon 8176 (165W) | 28 | 2.1-3.8 | $8719 | ||||
| EPYC 7601 (180W) |
32 | 2.2 -3.2 | $4200 | Xeon 8160 (150W) | 24 | 2.1-3.7 | $4702 |
| EPYC 7551 (180W) |
32 | 2.0-3.0 | >$3400 | Xeon 6152 (140W) | 22 | 2.1-3.7 | $3655 |
| EPYC 7501 (155/170W) | 32 | 2.0-3.0 | $3400 | Xeon 6150 (165W) | 18 | 2.7-3.4 | $3358 |
| EPYC 7451 (180W) |
24 | 2.3-3.2 | >$2400 | Xeon 6140 (165W) | 18 | 2.3-3.7 | $2445 |
| EPYC 7401 (155/170W) | 24 | 2.0-3.0 | $1850 | Xeon 6130 (125W) | 16 | 2.1-3.7 | $1894 |
| Xeon 5120 (105W) | 14 | 2.2-3.2 | $1555 | ||||
| EPYC 7351 (155/170W) | 16 | 2.4-2.9 | >$1100 | Xeon 5118 (105W) | 12 | 2.3-3.2 | $1221 |
| EPYC 7301 (155/170W) | 16 | 2.2-2.7 | >$800 | Xeon 4116 (85W) |
12 | 2.1-3.0 | $1002 |
| EPYC 7281 (155/170W) | 16 | 2.1-2.7 | $650 | Xeon 4114 (85W) |
10 | 2.2-3.0 | $694 |
| EPYC 7251 (120W) |
8 | 2.1-2.9 | $475 | Xeon 4110 (85W) |
8 | 2.1-3.0 | $501 |
Several trends pop up as we look at the table above.
First of foremost, those 24-28 core CPUs are a wonder of modern multicore CPU architecture, but you sure have to pay a lot of money for them. This is especially the case for the SKUs that can support 1.5 TB per socket. Of course if you can afford SAP Hana, you can afford $10k CPUs (or so the theory goes).
Still, if we compare the new high-end Skylake-EP SKUs with the previous 22-core Xeon E5-2699 v4 ($4199), paying twice as much for a 28-core chip just because it can be used in 8 socket configuration is bad news for those of us who need a very fast 2 socket system. In fact, it is almost as Intel has no competition: we only get a little more performance for the same price. For example you can get a Xeon 6148 (20 cores at 2.4 GHz, 150W TDP) for $3072, while you had to pay $3228 last generation for a Xeon E5-2698 v4 (20 cores at 2.2 GHz, 135W). The latter had smaller L2-caches but a much larger L3-cache (45 MB vs 27.5 MB). We're still not getting big steps forward on a performance-per-dollar basis, a similar problem we had with the launch of the Xeon E5 v4 last year.
Hopefully, AMD's EPYC can put some pressure on Intel, if not exceed the 800lb gorilla entirely. AMD typically offers many more cores for the same price. At the high end, AMD offers up to 10 more cores than the similar Xeon: compare the EPYC 7551 with the Intel Xeon 6152.
On the other hand, Intel offers lower TDPs and higher turbo clocks. The 16-core EPYC CPUs in particular seem to have remarkably high TDPs compared to similar Intel SKUs. Those 16-cores look even worse as, despite the lower core count and high TDP, the turbo clock is lower than 3 GHz.
In a nutshell: looking at the current lineups we want lower prices from Intel, and more attractive mid-range SKUs from AMD.
| AMD EPYC Processors (1P) | ||||
| Cores Threads |
Frequency (GHz) | TDP | Price | |
| EPYC 7551P | 32 / 64 | 2.0 -3.0 | 180W | $2100 |
| EPYC 7401P | 24 / 48 | 2.0-3.0 | 155W/170W | $1075 |
| EPYC 7351P | 16 / 32 | 2.4-2.9 | 155W/170W | $750 |
Finally, AMD's single-socket SKUs – identified by a P suffix – are by far the most interesting to us and the most dangerous to Intel. It will be interesting to see how well two 12-core Xeon 5118s can compete with one EPYC 7551P. The clocks are similar, but AMD has 8 extra cores, a less complex server board, much more PCIe bandwidth, and a lower TDP. AMD should have serious cost advantage on paper. We hope to check that in a later review.
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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.