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

anandtech.com

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

#181

Post by tutanchamun »

tomp wrote: post #154
tutanchamun wrote: post #149

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…

Can you expand on this a bit? Who is disallowing whom to not name what? From my first reading of your comment, it seems like Intel is pushing partners to not disclose their relationship with AMD? Is that not, like, almost cartel-like behavior?

It's probably best to ask servethehome since I've also understood it that way when first reading it but on a second read I'm not sure. The wording also reads to me as if they forgot a word or two (but maybe that's because I'm not a native speaker).

Here is the entire section:

> We are going to present a few data points in a min/ max. The minimum is system idle. Maximum is maximum observed through testing for the system. AMD specifically asked us not to use power consumption from the 2P test server with pre-production fan control firmware we used for our testing. 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.

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

#182

Post by privateSFacct »

nolok wrote: post #121
privateSFacct wrote: post #57

The thing is you can't even get Ryzen inside a Dell or Lenovo machine - so for businesses it's kind of hard to get onboard with they hype. So intel is going to keep up market share until AMD can get into some prebuilt systems.

What ? Lenovo is selling Ryzen based desktop by the truck load. I've bought more than a dozen this year already. Dell is in that game too. What AMD need for consumer computers is to get in the laptop oem build.

I've bought the Lenovo ThinkCentre AMD poducts. There are NO Ryzen Zen 2s. Literally NO Zen2 / 7mm products in prebuilt. If you can provide a link I would be thrilled. These are the 3600+ products.

Many folks are posting that there is "no reason" to buy intel. Actually, Intel is going to keep market share if you can't actually buy these great AMD product in a prebuilt configuration.

Will they show up eventually? Sure. But it can take a surprising amount of time for something like this to come down (I'm hearing murmurs of issues with heat / BIOS etc). I hope AMD is working closely with whomever is most ready / has a long track record with them (Lenovo comes to mind) to get these to market in a config that a business can buy.

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

#183

Post by snvzz »

x3sphere wrote: post #97
devonkim wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

Eh, it just came out last month, give them some time. In fact Intel had supply issues with their 9900K at launch too, for at least a month or two they were often out of stock at the major retailers. If getting ahold of a 3900X is still tough by next month then maybe that's cause for concern. I would agree that Intel is more mature on the BIOS side of things. AMD usually has launch issues that need to be ironed out wi…

>If getting ahold of a 3900X is still tough by next month then maybe that's cause for concern.

Next month, the 3950X will be the one hard to get a hold of.

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

#184

Post by ksec »

aristophenes wrote: post #84

I prefer the ServeTheHome review, this is more in their wheelhouse: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7002-series-rome-deliv...

Yes but when I posted the Anandtech review the ServeTheHome review wasn't up yet. Both are very decent review, I could only hope this get more upvote so other could read on it as well.

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

#185

Post by dragontamer »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #146

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…

> 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?

Yes. But the new EPYC chips have doubled their L3 cache, and that new memory-access hub has stupidly high bandwidth.

The larger L3 cache mitigates the latency problems, while the memory-access hub has more than enough memory-bandwidth to feed all the cores.

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

#186

Post by ksec »

As with all the comment, this really is EPYC. And we have a roadmap of Zen 3 and Zen 4 in the next two years. Zen 3 will likely be some enhancement of Zen 2 with 7nm EUV, Zen 4 will be DDR 5, PCIe 5.0 and 5 nm ,likely some more IPC improvement and I/O Die improvement.

The way I see it is that CPU performance for most of my needs has reached the tipping point. Unless something unexpected happen the performance per dollar in the next few years are only going to increase. I would not be surprised to see 128 Core / 256 Threads in Single Socket by 2021 / 2022.

The question I have in my head now, when will DRAM price drop to the point, where I have 64 Core EPYC Server with 4TB of Memory and call it a day. While there are some insanely large dataset, for possibly 90% of the Web DB I doubt we have a Database that is 4TB large. And it could all be in Memory. But even at $10 /GB, which is very low already for a 256GB DIMM Stick, 4TB is like $40K

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

#187

Post by devonkim »

jdietrich wrote: post #53
devonkim wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, "literally no reason"? Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. I can't buy a Ryzen 3900X without paying substantially inflated ebay prices, the BIOS issues out of the gate are super annoying, and all of these factors are not necessarily technical or performance factors but the fact is that I can get a 9900K right now with mature UEFI firmware on them from reputable motherboard manufac…

>Maybe because AMD can't keep up with demand for their new CPUs. You're confusing bandwidth and latency. Ryzen 3000 launched a month ago, the 3900x outperformed expectations, so the initial shipments sold out faster than expected. You can't magic up stock out of thin air, so there's an inevitable lag between retailers reporting unusually high demand and AMD being able to deliver sufficient stock. The bandwidth questi…

Both my comment and the one I responded to specified "At the moment" which is fairly specific and implies that it's subject to change. Of course things will be different in 3+ months and bugs and supply chain issues get ironed out. The question that matters a lot more is whether Intel will be able to respond adequately to AMD's offerings.

It is unclear whether Intel is truly disadvantaged in throughput for any appreciable length of time. We've seen what happened to Intel after the disastrous Prescott release years ago - they worked on the Core architecture and its follow-up Core 2 that put AMD in a pretty serious rut for the past decade. Your point of the 10nm offering launching and _still_ being lackluster is the big, big problem for Intel for short-term competitiveness.

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

#188

Post by kllrnohj »

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…

> It's unlikely that AMD has enough manufacturing capacity to fill all demand, so Intel will still make profit.

Keep in mind AMD's dies are tiny compared to Intel's. The CPU dies, the 7nm parts, are a mere 74mm2. They are going to be getting fantastic yields on them as a result, and can trivially allocate them to what's selling well. And it's the same die for their entire stack - consumer & enterprise.

Meanwhile the 28 core Xeons are a monstrous ~694mm2. Even though the 14nm process is mature, that's still a hugely expensive chip to make due to yields and capacity. You can only fit so many of those rectangles on the circular wafer.

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

#189

Post by ggg3 »

ksec wrote: post #172
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…

>It's unlikely that AMD has enough manufacturing capacity to fill all demand, Betting against TSMC, not a very wise move at the moment. >If Intel force AMD's profits close to zero, it can spoil AMD's technical win. That is assuming Intel will make a lost in other to hurt AMD, and I am not sure if predatory pricing is legal in US. AMD is not pricing their product to undercut Intel, AMD is pricing their product as it i…

TSMC works out for intel. instead of illegally bribing OEM like the last time to buy from them, they can legally move a new chip to TSMC and foot the fine for cancelling amd's contract.

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

#190

Post by mastax »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #68

The build team has already started to look for a 1RU, 2 server blade, 2 cores each server to buy to test our workload on it. Space and power vs. test and build throughput wins all battles. Great job AMD. Me personally, I just want to know if it can handle Civ6 with huge map and 18 AI players. It’s the little things..

Civ AI is still single-threaded so the 9900k and 9700k are the reigning champions. Zen 2 brought AMD close to parity though.
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