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7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

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Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#21
post #5

Back in the early 2000s Apple was getting crushed because Moto/IBM's PowerPC couldn't keep up with the 880lb gorilla Intel. Who could have predicted even a few years ago Apple would wind up in a similar situation, yet this time for having bet on Intel? Could the 8 core Mac Pro have been $3650 with a $650 Rome CPU, vs. the reality of $6k with a $3k Xeon?

I suspect apple will release comps with amd cpus, but hackintosh with amd is already good to go

Intel is known for aggressive licensing terms with their business partners, so I'm sure Apple can't do it anytime soon.

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#22
I do have an AMD Hackintosh, I don't see any reason you wouldn't be able to use these as a dev Hackintosh machine. It's gorgeously fast with my Ryzen 2700x, eats compilation time like no one's business and it's stable. And it's something around 1/4th the price of the same horsepower from native Intel Macs. I can't imagine the cost delta of a EPYC Rome Hackintosh to its Intel counterpart.

It's not like I cheaped out either, I have the same cheese-grater like anodised dark grey aluminium case with impeccable internal structure for easy upgrades. (Link to case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNsHS2U8RM)

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#23
post #12

Note that the 1P variant costs only $4,955, or under $80 per core. The consumer chips cost roughly $50/core, making this the flattest ramp I can personally remember.

Does anyone have a graph of recent $/transistor progress? Its obvious that moore's law is stagnant, and clock speed is dead, etc, etc. But are we at least getting the same core size at a lower cost ?

I'm interested in this as well. Of course from a practical POV, especially with escalating NRE costs at recent nodes, we're clearly at a point where "getting the same core size at lower cost" is not going to be a thing unless you can afford to amortize that NRE over a huge volume of chips.

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software that takes advantage of it it does.

Any commonly used software that benefits from AVX-512?

Not an authoritative list but a graphics benchmark and an x264 encoder at least according to this https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/avx-512-what-software-u...

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#25
post #13

If you need AVX/AVX2/AVX512 then go intel. Otherwise this AMD chip would be my choice for most applications.

What software is typically able to take advantage of these instructions? My use case is solving large LP/MIP problems for power markets, do those algorithms benefit?

Depends on the structure of your problem. Some lend themselves well to vectorization, others not nearly as much. Or at least the needed vectorized solvers are not yet available for some problem structures.

Try to use perf-tools to determine how you're currently using these execution units, and then you can look how much it might help. Rule of thumb: double the bitwidth of vector instructions gets you 80% more speed, instead of the theoretical 100%.

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#26
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any commonly used software that benefits from AVX-512?

Video editing, audio mastering, games.

Games!? No Man's Sky had trouble with SSE 4.1 being a requirement, and ended up patching it out... let alone AVX, AVX2, or AVX512.

Typically, games won't take advantage of new instruction sets until it's ready to be a minimum requirement, as otherwise you need to maintain two code paths, the benefit of which is only to be speeding up execution on what are already the more powerful CPUs.

What games can benefit from AVX512?

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#27
post #17

If you need AVX/AVX2/AVX512 then go intel. Otherwise this AMD chip would be my choice for most applications.

No, bad idea. Test or check reviews for your common workloads first, then choose. New Zen cores quite powerful and there are many gotchas with AVX execution. In most cases I can see AMD would be better overall or offer good value.

I agree and I plan to.

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#28

I do have an AMD Hackintosh, I don't see any reason you wouldn't be able to use these as a dev Hackintosh machine. It's gorgeously fast with my Ryzen 2700x, eats compilation time like no one's business and it's stable. And it's something around 1/4th the price of the same horsepower from native Intel Macs. I can't imagine the cost delta of a EPYC Rome Hackintosh to its Intel counterpart. It's not like I cheaped out e…

Do you have drivers for everything? Do you think it would work on a Threadripper with many NVidia GPUs as well?

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#29
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video editing, audio mastering, games.

Games!? No Man's Sky had trouble with SSE 4.1 being a requirement, and ended up patching it out... let alone AVX, AVX2, or AVX512. Typically, games won't take advantage of new instruction sets until it's ready to be a minimum requirement, as otherwise you need to maintain two code paths, the benefit of which is only to be speeding up execution on what are already the more powerful CPUs. What games can benefit from AV…

Not now obviously as it is not mainstream yet, but AVX512 makes developer's life way easier than older AVX sets. So I see no reason why game engine developers wouldn't use them in the future. For now only some server-specific workloads use AVX512.

Re: 7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

#30
post #5

Back in the early 2000s Apple was getting crushed because Moto/IBM's PowerPC couldn't keep up with the 880lb gorilla Intel. Who could have predicted even a few years ago Apple would wind up in a similar situation, yet this time for having bet on Intel? Could the 8 core Mac Pro have been $3650 with a $650 Rome CPU, vs. the reality of $6k with a $3k Xeon?

I suspect apple will release comps with amd cpus, but hackintosh with amd is already good to go

I doubt that, think of the amount of r&d they pour into arm for mobile. ARM will be their next platform for Macs.
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