AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked • Hacker News Board

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#141

Post by TomVDB » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:13 PM UTC

ken47 wrote: post #55

positr0n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many small and large companies with relatively small compute needs (small meaning the own a small datacenter or two). Lots of the code they are running is _extremely_ legacy, and it may or may not be in their risk tolerance to switch vendors to save a hundred grand a year on CPU costs. Especially if they think like OP and believe Intel will match them again in just a few more years. Why rock the boat?

Of course such decisions are always political. But now with Google backing EPYC Rome, there is the political risk of not switching, and finding yourself in the Stone Age 5 years from now. There's a lot more incentive to explore EPYC than there was a day ago.

What if Google did not include that very old legacy code during their evaluation process?

And exactly what kind of risk are you taking about?

If switching is as easy as you claim it is, you can still do so next year or the year after.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#142

Post by TomVDB » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:16 PM UTC

ken47 wrote: post #88

blihp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are creatures of habit. There are people still using Yahoo! for no reason other than it's what they are used to. For many people, buying Intel is the same thing. It takes years to win those people over. (and usually the argument that ultimately wins them over is 'everyone else is using it', rather than the economic one) Those of us who are early adopters jump ship as soon as it's obvious there's a better optio…

Sure, people are creatures of habit. But this isn't Yahoo vs Google we're talking about. People are going to be throwing down hundreds or thousands of dollars per CPU, and the differences are not remotely subjective.

As other have already noted: those hundreds or thousands per CPU are often just a blip on the radar compared to other costs.

Your comments in this discussion are very small scale, retail oriented.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#143

Post by lmilcin » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:21 PM UTC

Nokinside wrote: post #135

DuskStar wrote: post #2

> For those with little time: at the high end with socketed x86 CPUs, AMD offers you up to 50 to 100% higher performance while offering at a 40% lower price. Unless you go for the low end server CPUs, there is no contest: AMD offers much better performance for a much lower price than Intel, with more memory channels and over 2x the number of PCIe lanes. These are also PCIe 4.0 lanes. What if you want to more than 2 T…

Xeon has been making 50–70% profit margin depending on the Xeon type. Intel's profit margins will take a hit when they are forced to cut prices. It's unlikely that AMD has enough manufacturing capacity to fill all demand, so Intel will still make profit. History: AMD had similar upper hand against Intel with their Athlon processor 20 years ago. Intel's transition to the 180 nm process was delayed and AMD's K7 Athlon…

Of course, even if they were totally kicking ass it will take many years for AMD to build more capacity to what Intel has. Fabs take astronomic investment and time to build.

But, it seems Intel is and has been for quite some time unable to even keep up with competition. It was leader and it seems 10 and 7nm processes completely stopped them in their tracks with regards to competition.

I am kind of interested what actually happen. Probably there is an interesting book to be written on Intel's troubles with getting 10nm node.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#144

Post by StreamBright » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:22 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #2

> For those with little time: at the high end with socketed x86 CPUs, AMD offers you up to 50 to 100% higher performance while offering at a 40% lower price. Unless you go for the low end server CPUs, there is no contest: AMD offers much better performance for a much lower price than Intel, with more memory channels and over 2x the number of PCIe lanes. These are also PCIe 4.0 lanes. What if you want to more than 2 T…

What about the motherboard chipsets? In the past AMD had decent CPUs but their other chips were not that great.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#145

Post by Macha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:27 PM UTC

tooop wrote: post #82

gwicks56 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, I have been desperately trying to get one since launch. Think the USA is getting them all, and the rest of the world is getting screwed. I paid on launch day, my store is getting 2 3900x's this month, they have 78 people who have paid in full and are waiting.

I am in Europe and a reputable local online shop shows that i can get it after a week for 690$ but that is including VAT (575$ without VAT).

I am in Europe and a (previously?) Reputable online retailer showed me the same 2 weeks ago, but 1 week ago ( 2 days after the expected ship time) updated the expected time to a month and just said they didn't get the shipment expected, deal with it

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#146

Post by tempguy9999 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

Can anyone explain this?

> ...first generation of EPYC, ... attaching each one to two memory channels, resulting in a non-uniform memory architecutre (NUMA).

OK

> 2nd Gen EPYC, ... solved this. The CPU design implements a central I/O hub through which all communications off-chip occur.

Well it's solved in that all mem accesses now uniformly are a bit slower as all have to go through the new memory access hub. Is this a correct reading?

also

> The CCDs consist of two four-core Core CompleXes (1 CCD = 2 CCX). ... those CCX can only communicate with each other over the central I/O die. There is no inter-chiplet CCD communication.

What is the communication for, presumably the MESI (or whatever AMD uses) cache coherence stuff, and poss. the sync instructions (CAS, atomic increment) too? Anything else I'm missing?

Thanks

(edit: bloody love that you can click the 'Print This Article' button and it becomes a single long web page. Webbyness as god intended).

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#147

Post by polvs » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:38 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #128

manbatman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less physical space = less cooling requirements

No that doesn't make any sense. If you can fit two 200W systems in the same space as a single big 200W system then using less physical space increases the cooling requirements and the power density might become high enough to warrant exotic cooling solutions like immersion cooling.

Yes, you are right. And manufacturers are packing more and more wattage in the same space over time.

Thanks for mentioning immersion cooling as a potential solution to this; as a shameless plug, we are working very hard to make immersion cooling not exotic anymore at Submer ( https://submer.com ), solving all the problems we saw of the previous state of the art and helping with some of the biggest problems in the data center industry: cooling, power, densities, real estate costs, data center location, DC power distribution, TCO and more.

Exciting times... we are seeing a lot of trends pointing towards our immersion cooling solution and stealth traction from big names.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#148

Post by Nokinside » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:40 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #143

Nokinside wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xeon has been making 50–70% profit margin depending on the Xeon type. Intel's profit margins will take a hit when they are forced to cut prices. It's unlikely that AMD has enough manufacturing capacity to fill all demand, so Intel will still make profit. History: AMD had similar upper hand against Intel with their Athlon processor 20 years ago. Intel's transition to the 180 nm process was delayed and AMD's K7 Athlon…

Of course, even if they were totally kicking ass it will take many years for AMD to build more capacity to what Intel has. Fabs take astronomic investment and time to build. But, it seems Intel is and has been for quite some time unable to even keep up with competition. It was leader and it seems 10 and 7nm processes completely stopped them in their tracks with regards to competition. I am kind of interested what act…

They made some process technology choices that didn't work out as they planned.

The delay of the 10nm process and patching the delay with 14+ and 14++ didn't stop anything else they do in process technology. They have accelerated the path to 7nm (similar to TSMC's 5mm).

ps. Intel plans to launch their first discrete GPU in 2020 using 7nm process. That's going to be interesting.

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#149

Post by tutanchamun » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:49 PM UTC

servethehome had an interesting paragraph in their review:

> We are also not allowed to name because Intel put pressure on the OEM who built it to have AMD not disclose this information, despite said OEM having their logo emblazoned all over the system. Yes, Intel is going to that level of competitive pressure on its industry partners ahead of AMD’s launch.

https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7002-series-rome-deliv...

Re: AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

#150

Post by devonkim » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:49 PM UTC

Teknoman117 wrote: post #90

devonkim wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely intrigued. I've been going to my local Microcenters in the DC VA area for weeks now and they said they have gotten ZERO shipments in since release day of the 3900X and have a couple 3700X maybe on shelves. This doesn't necessarily completely invalidate my point though - distribution by AMD is clearly needing some work when one region is drowning in 3900X processors and a very wealthy metro area has non…

Odd. I was in Microcenter on Tuesday and they had a few 3900X's in the case. When I was there closer to launch, there weren't any and they told me that people would come in and ask for them before they even hit the shelf.

Which Microcenter location though? The Fairfax one the employee in the section on Sunday said the two boxes in the floor cases were 3700X and not 3900X because the boxes for the 3900X are larger.