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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twtech - Thursday, July 20, 2017 - link
I'd really like to see some compile-time benchmarks for these CPUs.For my own particular interests, time taken to do a full recompile of the Unreal 4 engine from source would be very useful. But even something more generic like the Linux kernel compiles per hour benchmark could serve as a useful point of reference.
szupek - Friday, July 21, 2017 - link
Meanwhile, the entire world still runs on IBM's DB2 for Datbases and IBM's Z/AS400 Mainframes. The fastest database in the world, by far...oh and the most secure (it's only hackable by standing in front of the console, seriously). Every single credit card transaction. Every single plain ticket. Most medical records and all of wall street. Yup. IBM still owns. So much that most of commenters probably have no idea just how big IBM truly is. If you care about Database speed & security, these processors shouldn't appeal to you.stevefan1999 - Saturday, July 22, 2017 - link
It's impossible for AMD to win completely.Remember kids, public cloud service providers such as Amazon(AWS), Google(GCP) and Joyent would still stick with Intel due to not only the compatibility issues like ecosystem and vendor inconsistency, but also the VM migration and security and module issues, all mentioned in the presentation slides presented by Intel. They are a very serious matter, as they, the public cloud services, are powering the Internet we use everyday, so being stable, consistent and be able to serve a good amount of SLA is vital to the public cloud, we wouldn't expect them to play with the new lad in the hood, the EPYC.
IIRC only the Microsoft(Azure) are using AMD server CPUs partially in some of their datacenters, running various Linux and Windows VMs using Hyper-V, and they have been performing quite well
The cloud services are exploding every year, but with what I've said, I doubt AMD could even kick in the first door at least for 3 to 4 years. This is still a big-win for Intel and what manipulations will Intel do I don't know.
On the other hand, Intel has failed to service the desktop market and they're figuring out how to hold their asses on the Internet infrastructure, never had them know the crusade of EPYC will come this fast.
The server market is quite a big meat, it's a 21 bil market, cool right? But that you will have guaranteed 'server upgrade' every year, is a bigger matter, as those server CPUs are designated to be disposed given the wattage and performance per dollar is lower on the newer CPUs. Those god-damn server operators will keen to replace their CPU (and therefore some serious metal pollution issues). Intel has been exploiting this and gained a big hurdle of money and therefore had their ecosystem grown. This is how Intel defends their platform by vendor lock-in, pathetic.
AMD is now being performance and cost competitive to Intel, but it's still dead in the High Performance Computing campaign unless AMD could provide higher frequencies. Well I have to say I know nothing about HPC, but I remembered the Bulldozer architecture of AMD is actually targeted and marketed for HPC! That's why AMD failed in general-purpose computing market and started the downfall of AMD/Domination of Intel 5 years ago. Even though we know the fate of Bulldozer, but hopefully AMD could still scrap some of the HPC goodies of Bulldozer out and benefits the mankind by accelerating researches such as finding the cures for cancer or solving some precise physics and mathematics.
Well, anyway the cloud, the HPC and the server market are the last resort for Intel and they will definitely hold their last ground. Good luck AMD on crushing the mean and obese Intel!
errorr - Sunday, July 23, 2017 - link
For all the talk about speed and efficiency the problem is about $$$. The sad fact is that what matters most isn't even the price of the cpus which is chump change in the grand scheme of things but how the software licensing costs are determined. Per core or per socket software pricing will matter a lot. The software companies will decide how successful EPYC is. I have a feeling they will be biased slightly toward AMD at the beginning as it is in their interest to foster competition for Intel, or if they are not forward looking enough the end customers might argue that the competition will benefit the SW companies in the long run by continuing to push competition.msroadkill612 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Whatever, its all pointless if the competition can read your secrets, which is a matter very close to the hearts of the cheque signers.AMD seem to have something very superior to offer in that department.
qweqwe - Tuesday, August 8, 2017 - link
we just did some heavy inhouse hpc-tests with epyc against diff. intel servers.the epyc is the clear winner in terms of performance and power consumption when it
comes to hand-tuned parallel-vector-code examples.
not bad amd !
readonly1 - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
qweqwe, I totally agree with you. Our inhouse HPC tests get the similar conclusion, after comparing AMD Epyc 7351 (dual socket, 32 cores, 2400Mhz) and Intel SKylake 6154 (dual socket, 36 cores, 3000Mhz). I think AMD clearly wins in the memory bandwidth, which is extremely important for HPC computation.msroadkill612 - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
7/11/2017 "Microsoft is already deploying AMD's EPYC in their Azure Cloud Datacenters."Interesting. As i have been theorising, a possible reason for the absence of retail epyc is not supply, but demand.
A single sale can soak up production runs.
If so tho, not much sign of big revenues from it yet, but there are other explanations for that. Contra processors for development work e.g.
q.epsilon.p - Sunday, June 10, 2018 - link
power consumption numbers with every benchmark would have been nice, because these parts are server benchmarks, Perf / Watt is one of the primary concerns. And where AMD kinda crush Intel, because it's isn't exactly being honest with it's TDP values nowadays when it comes to Data Centre and HEDT.TDP was traditionally the absolute maximum the CPU would put out as heat, now with a power consumption of 670W I am assuming that the heat being put out by the CPU is more than 165W.