AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked
by Johan De Gelas on August 7, 2019 7:00 PM ESTMulti-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.
| 2P SPEC CPU2006 Estimates | ||||||
| Subtest | Xeon 8176 |
EPYC 7601 |
EPYC 7742 |
EPYC 7742 |
Zen2 vs Zen1 |
EPYC 7742 Vs Xeon |
| Cores | 56C | 64C | 128C | |||
| Frequency | 2.8 G | 2.7G | 2.5-3.2G | 2.5-3.2G | ||
| GCC | 7.4 | 7.4 | 7.4 | 8.3 | 7.4 | 7.4 |
| 400.perlbench | 1980 | 2020 | 4680 | 4820 | +132% | +136% |
| 401.bzip2 | 1120 | 1280 | 3220 | 3250 | +152% | +188% |
| 403.gcc | 1300 | 1400 | 3540 | 3540 | +153% | +172% |
| 429.mcf | 927 | 837 | 1540 | 1540 | +84% | +66% |
| 445.gobmk | 1500 | 1780 | 4160 | 4170 | +134% | +177% |
| 456.hmmer | 1580 | 1700 | 3320 | 6480 | +95% | +110% |
| 458.sjeng | 1570 | 1820 | 3860 | 3900 | +112% | +146% |
| 462.libquantum | 870 | 1060 | 1180 | 1180 | +11% | +36% |
| 464.h264ref | 2670 | 2680 | 6400 | 6400 | +139% | +140% |
| 471.omnetpp | 756 | 705 (*) | 1520 | 1510 | +116% | +101% |
| 473.astar | 976 | 1080 | 1550 | 1550 | +44% | +59% |
| 483.xalancbmk | 1310 | 1240 | 2870 | 2870 | +131% | +119% |
We repeat: the SPECint rate test is likely unrealistic. If you start up 112 to 256 instances, you create a massive bandwidth bottleneck, no synchronization is going on and there is a consistent CPU load of 100%, all of which is very unrealistic in most integer applications.
The SPECint rate estimate results emphasizes all the strengths of the new EPYC CPU: more cores, much higher bandwidth. And at the time it ignores one of smaller disadvantages: higher intercore latency. So this is really the ideal case for the EPYC processors.
Nevertheless, even if we take into account that AMD has an 45% memory bandwidth advantage and that Intel latest chip (8280) offers about 7 to 8% better performance, this is amazing. The SPECint rate numbers of the EPYC 7742 are - on average - simply twice as high as those of the best available socketed Intel Xeons.
Interestingly, we saw that most rate benchmarks ran at P1 clock or the highest p-state minus one. For example, this is what we saw when running libquantum:
While some benchmarks like h264ref were running at lower clocks.
The current server does not allow us to do accurate power measuring but if the AMD EPYC 7742 can stay within the 225W TDP while running integer workloads at all cores at 3.2 GHz, that would be pretty amazing. Long story short: the new EPYC 7742 seems to be able to sustain higher clocks than comparable Intel models while running integer workloads on all cores.
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JoeBraga - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
It can happen if Intel uses the new archtecture Sunny Cove and MCM/Chiplet design instead of Monolithic DesignSanX - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
7zip is not a legacy test, it is important for anyone who sends big data over always damn slow network. Do you know all those ZIPs, GZs and other zippers which people mostly use, compress with turtle speeds as low as 20 MB/s even on supercomputers ? The 7Zip though parallelizes that nicely. So do not diminish this good test calling it "legacy"imaskar - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
7zip is a particular program, doing LZMA in parallel, that's why it is faster that lets say gzip. But on server you often do not want to parallel things, because other cores are doing other jobs and switching is costly. There are a lot of compressing algorithms which are better in certain situations. LZMA rarely fits. More often it is it's LZ4 or zstd for "generate once, consume many" or basic gzip (DEFLATE) for "generate once, consume once". Yes, you would be surprised, but the very basic 30 years old DEFLATE is still the king if you care for sum of compress, send, decompress AND your nodes are inside one datacenter (which is most of the times).SanX - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
What you can say about Ian's own test he developed to demonstrate avx512 speed boost which shows some crazy up to 3-4x or more speedups ? Does your test of Molecular Dynamics tell that Ian's test mostly irrelevant for such huge improvement of speed of the real life complex programs?imaskar - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
Probably because you can't use ONLY avx512. You still need regular things like jumps and conditions. And this is only the best case. Usually you also need to process part of the vector differently. For example, your vector has size 20, but your width is 16. You either do another vector pass, or 4 regular computations. Often second thing is faster or just the only option.realbabilu - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
Most of finite element software use Intel mkl to get every juice power spec of processor.it works for Intel ones not for amdAmd math kernel not heavily programmed, otnwaa just for Linux.
Other third party like gotoblas openblas still trying hard to detect cache and type for zen2.
I mean for workstation floating point still hard for amd.
peevee - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Prices per core-GHz:EPYC 7742 $48.26
EPYC 7702 $50.39
EPYC 7642 $43.25
EPYC 7552 $38.12
EPYC 7542 $36.64
EPYC 7502 $32.50
EPYC 7452 $26.93
EPYC 7402 $26.53
EPYC 7352 $24.46
EPYC 7302 $20.38
EPYC 7282 $14.51
EPYC 7272 $17.96
EPYC 7262 $22.46
EPYC 7252 $19.15
Value in this 7282 is INSANE.
peevee - Tuesday, August 20, 2019 - link
"Even though our testing is not the ideal case for AMD (you would probably choose 8 or even 16 back-ends), the EPYC edges out the Xeon 8176. Using 8 JVMs increases the gap from 1% to 4-5%."1%? 36917 / 27716 = 1.3319...
33%. Without 8 JVMs.
KathyMilligan - Wednesday, August 21, 2019 - link
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is very good university. I am too poorly prepared for this level of education. But I'm getting ready. I read a lot of articles and books, communicate with many smart former students of this university. I also buy research papers on site and this gives me a lot of useful information, which is not so easy to find on the Internet.YB1064 - Wednesday, August 28, 2019 - link
Looks like Intel has been outclassed, out-priced and completely out-maneuvered by AMD. What a disaster!