AMD 3rd Gen EPYC Milan Review: A Peak vs Per Core Performance Balance
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Andrei Frumusanu on March 15, 2021 11:00 AM ESTDisclaimer June 25th: The benchmark figures in this review have been superseded by our second follow-up Milan review article, where we observe improved performance figures on a production platform compared to AMD’s reference system in this piece.
SPEC - Per-Core Win for "F"-Series 75F3
A metric that is actually more interesting than isolated single-thread performance, is actually per-thread performance in a fully loaded system. This actually is a measurement and benchmark figure that would greatly interest enterprises and customers which are running software or workloads that are possibly licensed on a per-core basis, or simply workloads that require a certain level of per-thread service level agreement in terms of performance.
It’s precisely this market that AMD is trying to target with its new “F”-series of processors, and this is where the new 75F3 comes into play. With 32 cores, 4 cores per chiplet with the full 256MB of L3 cache, and a base frequency of 2.95GHz, boosting up to 4.0GHz at a default 280W TDP, is the chip is squeezing out the maximum per-core performance while still offering a massive amount of multi-threaded performance.
At full load, this ends up with a massive per-thread performance leadership on the part of the 75F3, landing 45% ahead of the 7763 and 51% ahead of the Intel Xeon 8280.
It’s to be noted that limiting the thread count of the higher core-count SKUs will also result in a better per-thread performance metric, for example running a 7713 with only 32 threads will result in a SPECint2017 estimated score of 4.30 – the 75F3 still has a 16% advantage there even though its boost clock is only 8.8% higher at the peak – meaning the 75F3 is achieving higher effective frequencies. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to do the same experiment on the equal 280W 7763 part.
AMD discloses that the biggest generational gains for the Milan stack is found in the lower core-count models, where for example the 7313 and the 7343 outperforms the 7282 and 7302 by 25%. Reason for this is that for example the new 7313 features double the L3 cache, and all the new CPUs are boosting higher with respectively higher TDPs, increasing to 150/190W from 120/155W, as well as landing in at +50% higher price points when comparing generation to generation.
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Oxford Guy - Tuesday, April 6, 2021 - link
PSP, as far as I know.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
I understand that "zen" architecture is for x86 but with modifications could it be transplanted to the ARM instruction set, as i see it, it definitely could so the real question is when will the transition really start i think around the theoretical zen 5th gen or 6th gen, theres gonna be a lot of arm around here especially with apple. and yes it will defenitly start wiht servers it always does.Gomez Addams - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
There are really two things at work : the instruction set of the processor and its topology. AMD has been improving both quite a bit. The instruction set enhancements won't transfer quite so well to ARM but the topology certainly can. Since ARM processors are much smaller, they could probably work in chiplets with possibly 32 cores in each or maybe 16 cores and 4-way SMT. That could make for a very impressive server processor. Four chiplets would give 64 cores and 256 threads. Yikes!rahvin - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
So much wrong.mode_13h - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
There are pieces of it that can be reused (on the same manufacturing node, at least), but making a truly-competitive ARM chip is probably going to involve some serious tinkering with the pipeline stages & architecture. And there are significant parts of an x86 chip that you'd have to throw out and redo, most notably the instruction decoder.In all, it's a different core that you're talking about. Not like CPU vs. GPU level of difference, but it's a lot more than just cosmetics.
coder543 - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
"For this launch, both the 16-core F and 24-core F have the same TDP, so the only reason I can think of for AMD to have a higher price on the 16-core processor is that it only has 2 cores per chiplet active, rather than three? Perhaps it is easier to bin a processor with an even number of cores active."If I were to speculate, I would strongly guess that the actual reason is licensing. AMD knows that more people are going to want the 16 core CPUs in order to fit into certain brackets of software licensing, so AMD charges more for those to maximize profit and availability of the 16 core parts. For those customers, moving to a 24 core processor would probably mean paying *significantly* more for whatever software they're licensing.
SarahKerrigan - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
Yep.Intel sold quad-core Xeon E7's for impressively high prices for a similar reason.
Mikewind Dale - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
Why couldn't you run a 16 core software license on a 24 core CPU? I run a 4 core licensed version of Stata MP on an 8 core Ryzen just fine.Ithaqua - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
Compliance and lawsuits.You have to pay for all the cores you use for some software.
Yes if you're only running 4 cores on your 8 core Ryzen then your fine but Stata MP is using all 8, there could be a lawsuit.
Now for you I'm sure they wouldn't care. For a larger firm with 10,000+ machines, then that's going to be a big lawsuit.
arashi - Wednesday, March 17, 2021 - link
Some licenses charge for ALL cores, regardless of how many cores you would actually be using.