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
AMD’s EPYC 7000-Series Processors
As announced back at the official launch, AMD is planning to hit both the dual socket and single socket markets. With up to 32 cores, 64 threads, 2TB/socket support and 128 PCIe lanes per CPU, they believe that by offering a range of core counts and frequencies, they have the nous to attack Intel, even if it comes at a slight IPC disadvantage.
AMD’s main focus will be on the 2P parts, where each CPU will use 64 PCIe lanes (using the Infinity Fabric protocol) to connect to each other, meaning that in a 2P system there will still be 128 PCIe 3.0 lanes to go around for add-in devices. There will be the top four SKUs available initially, and the other parts should be in the hands of OEMs by the end of July. All the CPUs will have access to all 64MB of the L3 cache, except the 7200-series which will have access to half.
The new processors from AMD are called the EPYC 7000 series, with names such as EPYC 7301 and EPYC 7551P. The naming of the CPUs is as follows:
EPYC 7551P
- EPYC = Brand
- 7 = 7000 Series
- 30/55 = Dual Digit Number indicative of stack positioning / performance (non-linear)
- 1 = Generation
- P = Single Socket, not present in Dual Socket
So in the future, we will see second generation ‘EPYC 7302’ processors, or if AMD scales out the design there may be EPYC 5000 processors with fewer silicon dies inside, or EPYC 3000 with a single die but for the EPYC platform socket (obviously, those last two are speculation).
But starting with the 2P processors:
| AMD EPYC Processors (2P) | |||||||||
| Cores Threads |
Frequency (GHz) | L3 | DRAM | PCIe | TDP | Price | |||
| Base | All | Max | |||||||
| EPYC 7601 | 32 / 64 | 2.20 | 2.70 | 3.2 | 64 MB | 8-Ch DDR4 2666 MT/s |
8 x16 128 PCIe |
180W | $4200 |
| EPYC 7551 | 32 / 64 | 2.00 | 2.55 | 3.0 | 180W | >$3400 | |||
| EPYC 7501 | 32 / 64 | 2.00 | 2.60 | 3.0 | 155W/170W | $3400 | |||
| EPYC 7451 | 24 / 48 | 2.30 | 2.90 | 3.2 | 180W | >$2400 | |||
| EPYC 7401 | 24 / 48 | 2.00 | 2.80 | 3.0 | 155W/170W | $1850 | |||
| EPYC 7351 | 16 / 32 | 2.40 | 2.9 | 155W/170W | >$1100 | ||||
| EPYC 7301 | 16 / 32 | 2.20 | 2.7 | 155W/170W | >$800 | ||||
| EPYC 7281 | 16 / 32 | 2.10 | 2.7 | 32 MB | 155W/170W | $650 | |||
| EPYC 7251 | 8 / 16 | 2.10 | 2.9 | 120W | $475 | ||||
The top part is the EPYC 7601, which is the CPU we were provided for in this comparison. This is a 32-core part with simultaneous multithreading, a TDP of 180W and a tray price of $4200. As the halo part, it also gets the good choice on frequencies: 2.20 GHz base, 3.2 GHz at max turbo (up to 12 cores active) and 2.70 GHz when all cores are active.
Moving down the stack, AMD will offer 24, 16 and 8-core parts. These will disable 1, 2 and 3 cores per CCX respectively, as we saw with the consumer Ryzen processors, and is done in order to keep core-to-core latencies more predictable (as well as keeping access to all the L3 cache). What is interesting to note is that AMD will offer a 32-core part at 155W (when using DDR4-2400) for $3400, which is expected to be very competitive compared to Intel (and support 2.66x more DRAM per CPU).
The 16-core EPYC 7281, while having half the L3, will be available for $650, making an interesting 2P option. Even the bottom processor at the stack, the 8-core EPYC 7251, will support the full 2TB of DRAM per socket as well as 128 PCIe lanes, making it a more memory focused SKU and having almost zero competition on these sorts of builds from Intel. For software that requires a lot of memory but pays license fees per core/socket, this is a nice part.
For single socket systems, AMD will offer the following three processors:
| AMD EPYC Processors (1P) | |||||||||
| Cores Threads |
Frequency (GHz) | L3 | DRAM | PCIe | TDP | Price | |||
| Base | All | Max | |||||||
| EPYC 7551P | 32 / 64 | 2.0 | 2.6 | 3.0 | 64 MB | 8-Ch DDR4 2666 MT/s |
8 x16 128 PCIe |
180W | $2100 |
| EPYC 7401P | 24 / 48 | 2.0 | 2.8 | 3.0 | 155W/170W | $1075 | |||
| EPYC 7351P | 16 / 32 | 2.4 | 2.9 | 155W/170W | $750 | ||||
These processors mirror the specifications of the 2P counterparts, but have a P in the name and slightly different pricing.
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deltaFx2 - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
"Can you mention one innovation from AMD that changed the world?" : None. But the same applies to Intel too, save, I suppose, the founders (Moore and Noyce) contributions to IC design back when they were at Fairchild/Shockley. That's not Intel's contribution. Computer Architecture/HPC? That's IBM. They invented the field along with others like CDC. Intel is an innovator in process technology, specifically manufacturing. Or used to be... others are catching up. That 3-yr lead that INtel loves to talk about is all but gone. So with that out of the way...AMD's contributions to x86 technology: x86-64, hypertransport, integrated memory controller, multicore, just to name a few. Intel copied all of them after being absolutely hammered by Opteron. Nehalem system architecture was a copy-paste of Opteron. It is to AMD's discredit that they ceded so much ground on the CPU microarchitecture since then with badly executed Bulldozer, but it was AMD that brought high-performance features to x86 server. Intel would've just loved to keep x86 on client and Itanium on server (remember that innovative atrocity?). Then there's a bunch on the GPU side (which INtel can't get right for love or money), but that came from an acquisition, so I won't count those.
"AMD exists because they are always inferior". Remember K8? It absolutely hammered intel until 2007. Remember Intel's shenanigans bribing the likes of Dell to not carry K8? Getting fined in the EU for antitrust behaviors and settling with AMD in 2010? Not much of a memory card on you, is there?
AMD gaining even 5-10% means two things for intel: Lower margins on all but the top end (Platinum) and a loss in market share. That's plain bad for the stock.
"Intel is a data center giant have head start have the resources...". Yes, they are giants in datacenter compute. 99% market share. Only way to go from there is down. Also, those acquisitions you're talking about? Only altera applies to the datacenter. Also, remember McAfee for an eye-watering $7.8 bn? How's that working out for them?
Shankar1962 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Nvidia who have been ahead than Intel in AI should be the more competent threatHow much market share Intel loses depends on how they compete against Nvidia
Amd will probably gain 5% by selling products for cheap prices
Intel controls 98/99% share so it's inevitable to lose a few % as more players see the money potential but unless Intel loses to Nvidia there is annuphill battle for Qualcomm ARM.
HanSolo71 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Could you guys create a Benchmark for Virtual Desktop Solutions? These AMD chips sound awesome for something like my Horizon View environment where I have hundreds of 2 core 4GB machines.Threska - Saturday, July 22, 2017 - link
For VDI wouldn't either an APU setup, or CPU+GPU be better?msroadkill612 - Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - link
Kudos to the authors. I imagine its gratifying to have stirred such healthy & voluminous debate :)milkod2001 - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
Are you guys still updating BENCH results? I cannot find there benchmark results for RYZEN CPUs when i want to compare them to others.Ian Cutress - Friday, July 14, 2017 - link
They've been there since the launchAMD (Zen) Ryzen 7 1800X:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1853
KKolev - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
I wonder if AMD'd EPYC CPU's can be overclocked. If so, the AMD EPYC 7351P would be very interesting indeed.uklio - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
How could you not do Cinebench results?! we need an answer!JohanAnandtech - Thursday, July 13, 2017 - link
I only do server benchmarks, Ian does workstation. Ian helped with the introduction, he will later conduct the workstation benchmarks.