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  • negusp - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    hard F in the chat for intel
  • pancakes - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    F in chat for wallets of people running Windows server
  • azfacea - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    windows server in 2019 LUL
  • diehardmacfan - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    on-prem Windows Server is probably at an all time high in 2019?
  • azfacea - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    desperate for a comeback huh? cool hold your 10% tight and gloat about upcoming bfloat16
  • diehardmacfan - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Sorry, who is desperate for a comeback? Bring up a floating point format when called out on the ridiculous notion that Windows Server isn't still a large part of the marketplace? say wha
  • mkaibear - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Just hopping in to say that I am an IT manager for a major employer in the UK and of our 1800 servers more than 80% of them are Windows... this is not a trend which I see changing any time soon.
  • Deshi! - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I work as an application engineer for a major global finance company that develops and hosts banking and e-commerce software used by banks and major shopping outlets. 90% of all our servers are either Linux or AIX mainly running websphere or standalone Java instances. We only have a handful of Windows servers, mainly for stuff like active directory and Outlook/ SharePoint. So yeah allot of it depends on the use case, but allot of the big boys do use Linux or AIX. It's cheaper and performs better for these use cases.
  • cyberguyz - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I guess we all have to ask ourselves, who are the customers that would benefit most from a 64-core, 128 gen 4 PCIe processors? SMB or huge customers that would shell out many millions of $$$ for their middleware & backend systems? @Deshi! I or one of my L3 colleagues an L3 engineer contacted by your global finance company to fix Websphere problems some years back ;)
  • FreckledTrout - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    @cyberguz, Who would benefit from these high core servers? Any company running VM's so pretty much every large company. This goes doubly for cloud providers.
  • MDD1963 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    of the '1800 servers', how many of those are virtual, just out of curiosity? ('1800 servers' is not quite as impressive if there were, for example, 10 hosts w/ 180 Windows VMs each, for example) U.S.A.F offices are still mostly Windows 10...I'd suspect the are datacenters at each base having a large Windows Server presence as well.. (But, we used Redhat onboard assorted recce aircraft for many years now....; which seems stupid in light of the fact they could easily use CentOS for free; presumably, a Senator's family members work at Redhat, and enjoy the large income from support contracts)
  • eek2121 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Employers use Windows, data centers use Linux. All the major cloud providers, including Microsoft, have reported that Linux has the highest market share.
  • gylgamesh - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Could you please specify what kind of servers those are and what tasks do they perform, and also which MS Windows OS are they using? Thanks.
  • Slickest - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I work for one of the largest colleges in the nation, and 90% of our servers are Windows.
  • 69369369 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    "LUL"

    Go back to Twitch kiddo.
  • azfacea - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    and what would u do if i dont?
  • Oliseo - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Tell your mum you're up late again and she will force you to go outside, and we all know how much your dislike having to do that.
  • prophet001 - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link

    I don't get the hate for windows server? How you gonna run a domain and active directory in linux?
  • CaedenV - Wednesday, August 21, 2019 - link

    I use to work in schools, and a few that could not afford Windows Server would run AD through some Linux application. It was not exactly full-featured, but it worked well enough for 'free' solution.
  • deltaFx2 - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    @Pancakes: Are you kidding? 1T perf is at par with Skylake. Windows licenses per core. Why would anyone buy a SKU with more cores than they need? And if they did do that, why would they not run them on a VM? Do these people also buy more racks than they need and run windows just for the fun of it?
  • close - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    VMware licenses per socket. I'm not sure what kind of niche market one would have to be in (maybe HPC on Windows with the HPC Pack?) to run Win server bare metal on this thing. So I'm pretty sure the average cores/VM for Windows servers is relatively low and no reason for concern.
  • schujj07 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    @deltaFx2 Most people purchase more cores than they currently need so that they can grow. In the long run it is cheaper to purchase a higher SKU right now than purchase a second host a year down the road.
    @close There are companies that are Windows only so they would install Hyper-V onto this host to use as their hypervisor. However, even under VMware if you want to license Windows as a VM you have to pay the per-core licensing for every CPU core on each VM. I looked into getting volume licensing for Server 2016 for the company I work for we have 2 hosts with dual 24 core Epyc 7401's and we would need to get 16 dual core license packs for each instance of Server 2016. It ended up that we couldn't afford to get Sever 2016 because it would have cost us $5k per instance of Server 2016.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    @schujj07 Just buy a Windows Server Datacenter license for each host and you don't have to worry about licensing each VM.
  • schujj07 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    AFAIK it doesn't work that way when you are running VMware. With VMware you will still have to license each one.
  • wolrah - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    @schujj07 nope. Windows Server licensing is the same no matter which hypervisor you're using. Datacenter licenses allow unlimited VMs on any licensed host.
  • diehardmacfan - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    This is correct. You do need to buy the licenses to match the core count of the hypervisor, however.
  • Dug - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    You still have to pay for cores on datacenter. Each datacenter license covers 2 cores with a minimum purchase of 8. So over 8 cores and you are buying more licenses. 64 cores is about $25k
  • MDD1963 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Windows license (Standard or Datacenter) covers 2 *sockets* for, a total of 16 cores....; if you have more than 2 sockets, you need more licenses...; if you have 2 sockets, filled with 8 core CPUs, you are good with one standard license... If you have 20 total cores, you need a standard license, and a pair of '2 core' add ons... If you have 32 cores, you need 2 full standard licenses....
  • MDD1963 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Datacenter is still licensed for 16 cores, with little 2 pack increments available, or, in the case of a 64 core CPU, effectively 4 Datacenter licenses would be required...($6k per 16 cores, or, roughly $24k)
  • deltaFx2 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    @schujj07: Of course I get that. The OP @Pancakes implied that Rome was going to hurt the wallets of buyers using windows server. The implication being this would not happen if they bought Intel. I was questioning those assumptions. How can Rome cost more money for windows licenses unless rome needs more cores to get the same job done or enterprises overprovision Rome (in terms of total cores) vs. Intel. That would make sense if the per-thread performance is worse but it's not.
  • schujj07 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    The problem is Microsoft went to the Oracle model of licensing for Server 2016/19. That means that you have to license EVERY CPU core it can be run on. Even if you create a VM with only 8 cores, those 8 cores won't always be running on the same cores of the CPU. That is where Rome hurts the pockets of people. You would pay $10k/instance of Server Standard on a single dual 64 core host or $65k/host for Server DataCenter on a dual 64 core host.
  • browned - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    We are currently a small MS shop, VMWare with 8 sockets licensed, Windows Datacenter License. 4 Hosts, 2 x 8 core due to Windows Licensing limits. But we are running 120+ majority Windows systems on those hosts.

    I see our future with 4 x 16 core systems, unless our CPU requirements grow, in which case we could look at 3 x 48 or 2 x 64 core or 4 x 24 core and buy another lot of datacenter licenses. Because we already have 64 cores licensed the uplift to 96 or 128 is not something we would worry about.

    We would also get a benefit from only using 2, 3, or 4 of our 8 VMWare socket licenses. We could them implement a better DR system, or use those licenses at another site that currently use Robo licenses.
  • jgraham11 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    so how does it work with hyper threaded CPUs? And what if the server owner decides to not run Intel Hyperthreading because it is so prone to CPU exploits (most 10 yrs+ old). Does Google still pay for those cores??
  • ianisiam - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    You only pay for physical cores, not logical.
  • twotwotwo - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Sort of a fun thing there is that in the past you've had to buy more cores than you need sometimes: lower-end parts that had enough CPU oomph may not support all the RAM or I/O you want, or maybe some feature you wanted was absent or disabled. These seem to let you load up on RAM and I/O at even 8C or 16C (min. 1P or 2P configs).

    Of course, some CPU-bound apps can't take advantage of that, but in the right situation being able to build as lopsided a machine as you want might even help out the folks who pay by the core.
  • azfacea - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    F
  • NikosD - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Ok guys...The Anandtech's team had a "bad luck and timming issues" to offer a true and decent review of the Greatest x86 CPU of all time, so for a proper review of EPYC Rome coming from the most objective and capable site for servers, take a look here:
    https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7002-series-...
  • anactoraaron - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    F
  • phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    Review article for new CPU devolves into Windows vs Linux pissing match, completely obscuring any interesting discussion about said hardware. We really haven't reached peak stupid on the internet yet. :(
  • The Benjamins - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Can we get a C20 benchmark for the lulz?
  • Cooe - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Hexus got around ≈31,000 iirc.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Funny enough, from what I've heard from other people who have tested it, it actually doesn't run all that well with dual EPYCs. Too many cores that are too fast, to the point that initialization times are starting to hold back performance.
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I got a message from the Cinebench team at one point. They don't spawn/kill/respawn for each little segment: it's kept alive and just fed more data. CB20 is also designed to scale, given that CB15 freaked out above 32 cores or so
  • prisonerX - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Where is our resident Intel shill? Selling his INTC stock in a panic perhaps?
  • abufrejoval - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    comiserating with the ARM server guys
  • Lord of the Bored - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Not gonna lie, I scrolled straight to the comments to see the Intel fanboy spinning this. Instead I got a wall of... Call of Duty references, I think?
  • PeachNCream - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    The fact that AMD released a product that breaks even HStewart's ability to defend shill for Intel should say something pretty epic about Epyc.
  • Lord of the Bored - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    You ain't lyin' there. Seems the name was chosen well.
  • Korguz - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    i bet, he would STILL but the intel cpu too. even though it costs more, slower and probably uses more power.
  • Samus - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I was just thinking if Trump doesn't crash the market with his shenanigans then AMD could be an incredibly good buy in the next few months. The first time they've been a good buy in awhile.

    Although a lot of my daytrader friends have always claimed AMD was a good short-term buy, which is partially true, but if they can keep momentum and Intel doesn't try strongarming them out of OEMs (you know, like they used too...)
  • Zoolook - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    It's been a pretty good investment for me, bought at 8$ two years ago, seems like I'll keep it for a while longer.
  • CheapSushi - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    It's glorious...one might say.... even EPYC.
  • abufrejoval - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Hard to believe a 64 core CPU can be had for the price of a used middle class car or the price of four GTX 2080ti.

    Of course once you add 2TB of RAM and as many PCIe 4 SSDs as those lanes will feed, it no longer feels that affordable.

    There is a lot of clouds still running ancient Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs: I guess replacing those will eat quite a lot of chips.

    And to think that it's the very same 8-core part that powers the engire range: That stroke of simplicity and genius took so many years of planning ahead and staying on track during times when AMD was really not doing well. Almost makes you believe that corporations owned by share holders can actually sometimes actually execute a strategy, without Facebook type voting rights.

    Raising my coffee mug in a salute!
  • schujj07 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Sandy Bridge maxed out at 8c/16t.
    Ivy Bridge maxed out at 15c/30t.
    Haswell maxed out at 18c/36t.
    That means that a single socket Epyc 64c/128t can give you more CPU cores than a quad socket Sandy Bridge (32c/64t) or Ivy Bridge (60c/120t) and only a few less cores that a quad socket Haswell (72c/144t).
  • Eris_Floralia - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    This is what we've all been waiting for!
  • Eris_Floralia - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Thank you for all the work!
  • quorm - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Given the range of configurations and prices here, I don't see much room for threadripper. Maybe 16 - 32 cores with higher clock speeds? Really wondering what a new threadripper can bring to the table.
  • willis936 - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    A reduced feature set and lower prices, namely.
  • quorm - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Reduced in what way, though? I'm assuming threadripper will be 4 chiplets, 64 pcie lanes, single socket only. All ryzen support ecc.

    So, what can it offer? At 32 cores, 8 channel memory becomes useful for a lot of workloads. Seems like a lot of professionals would just choose epyc this time. On the other end, I don't think any gamers need more than a 3900x/3950x. Is threadripper just going to be for bragging rights?
  • quorm - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Sorry, forgot to add, 3950x is $750, epyc 7302p is $825. Where is threadripper going to fit?
  • nathanddrews - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Binned for OC? We'll find out soon enough!
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    At this point it looks like all TR will get your is "official" ECC support and more PCIe lanes. Maybe cheaper motherboards than EPYC.
  • willis936 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Half the memory lanes (this is a big one), half the pcie lanes, max of 1 socket per mobo. Those are important features for datacenter customers and their absence from threadripper makes threadripper less desirable than epyc in the datacenter.
  • rocky12345 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Yes but Threadripper is made for high end desktops for video editing etc etc and some gaming. I do not see the big data center guys going after TR all that much. Yes you may see some of the TR go there but that is not what TR is made for that is why we have EPYC & XEON CPU's.

    I do have to agree though where some said where does TR fit in price wise since we are going to have a 16/32 main stream desktop CPU shortly from AMD. I do also think this time around the 32/64 3990 TR will be 10x better than the older 2990 TR just from the memory controller not being in each CPU complex and in the 2990x because of bandwidth and latency from the memory performance really suffered when all cores were being used. On the 3990x (or whatever it will be called) this should not be an issue. If AMD is smart they will not release a 64/128 3000 series TR since it would have to be priced to far out of reach for even the most techy guy with money and the only ones that would have them would be review sites and YT reviewers and that would be only because them got them sent for free for reviews. 32/64 and the better memory performance as a whole for the new chips would be more than enough to make the 32/64 TR 3990x an instant success. Just my opinion of coarse and AMD will probably do something stupid and release a higher core count TR series CPU that next to no one will be able to afford just to be able to say hey we got the best high end CPU on the planet but to bad no one is gonna buy them because the price is to high but we have the best so who cares.
  • rocky12345 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Oops dammit forgot to make paragraph's did not mean to have it all bunched up like that.
  • Mark Rose - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Why wouldn't they release a 64 core Threadripper? Assuming they double the price of the 32 core, it would be $3400. That's affordable to a lot of people working in tech, and should be affordable to just about any business that has employees waiting on their 32 core Threadripper. AMD would sell a ton.

    That being said, I wouldn't personally buy one as I don't have a need. I'd be more likely buy a 16 core 3000 series Threadripper myself.
  • Manch - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Higher Clocks
  • sor - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    It will be a feature/packaging thing. The motherboards would be TR4 and feature enthusiast features, overclocked memory, etc, not highly reliable server oriented boards. The processors themselves might be fairly comparable to their EPYC counterparts, as some Xeons were occasionally comparable to their desktop ones.
  • close - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    TR was supposed to be a stopgap measure until the consume Ryzen range stretched high enough and the server EPYC range stretched low enough. I guess there is a place for further differentiation especially in terms of the platform (motherboard) used, where you have server like CPU on a more consumer like MB to create basically a workstation. Maybe OC will also fit in here.
  • Death666Angel - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    "TR was supposed to be a stopgap measure" where can I see AMD stating that? Considering Intel has fared pretty well with the consumer/HEDT/server differentiation, I don't think AMD needs to axe TR. I don't see them giving us EPYC with OC functions and 8 memory channles seems overkill for 16 or 32 desktop cores. I also haven't seen a statement to the effect you claim, so I highly doubt it at the moment.
  • Kevin G - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Clock speeds. AMD is being very aggressive on clocks here but the Ryzen 3000 series were still higher. I would expect new Threadripper chips to clock closer to their Ryzen 3000 cousins.

    AMD *might* differentiate Threadripper by cache amounts. While the CPU cores work, they may end up binning Threadripper based upon the amount of cache that wouldn't pass memory tests.

    Last thing would be price. The low end Epyc chips are not that expensive but suffer from low cores/low clocks. Threadripper can offer more for those prices.
  • quorm - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Here's hoping we see a 16 core threadripper with a 4ghz base clock.
  • azfacea - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    half memory channels. half pcie lanes. also i think with epyc AMD spends more on support and system development. i can see 48c 64c threadripper coming 30-40% lower and not affecting epyc
  • twtech - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    If they gimp the memory access again, it mostly defeats the purpose of TR as a workstation chip. You'd want an Epyc anyway.
  • quorm - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Well, on the plus side, the i/o die should solve the asymmetric memory access problem.
  • ikjadoon - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Stunning.
  • aryonoco - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Between 50% to 100% higher performance while costing between 40% to 50% less. Stunning!

    I remember the sad days of Opteron in 2012 and 2013. If you'd told me that by the end of the decade AMD would be in this position, I'd have wanted to know what you're on.

    Everyone at AMD deserves a massive cheer, from the technical and engineering team all the way to Lisa Su, who is redefining what "execution" means.

    Also thanks for the testing Johan, I can imagine testing this server at home with Europe's recent heatwave would have not been fun. Good to see you writing frequently for AT again, and looking forward to more of your real world benchmarks.
  • twtech - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    It's as much about Intel having dropped the ball over the past few years as it is about AMD's execution.

    According to Intel's old roadmaps, they ought to be transitioning past 10nm on to 7nm by now, and AMD's recent releases in that environment would have seemed far less impressive.
  • deltaFx2 - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Yeah, except I don't remember anyone saying Intel was going great guns because AMD dropped the ball in the bulldozer era. AMD had great bulldozer roadmaps too, it didn't matter much. If bulldozer had met its design targets maybe Nehalem would not be as impressive... See, nobody ever says that. It's almost like if AMD is doing well, it's not because they did a good job but intel screwed up.

    Roadmaps are cheap. Anyone can cobble together a powerpoint slide.
  • Lord of the Bored - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Well, it is a little of both on both sides.
    Intel's been doing really well in part because AMD bet hard on Bulldozer and it didn't pay out.

    Similarly, when AMD's made really good processors but Intel was on their game, it didn't much matter. The Athlon and the P2/3 traded blows in the Megahertz wars, but in the end AMD couldn't actually break Intel because Intel made crooked business deals*backspace* because AMD was great, but not actually BETTER.

    The Athlon 64 was legendary because AMD was at the top of their game and Intel was riding THEIR Bulldozer into the ground at the same time. If the Pentium Mobile hadn't existed, thus delaying a Netburst replacement, things would be very different right now.
  • sing_electric - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Not just Netburst - remember, Intel's plans were ORIGINALLY for Itanium to migrate down through the stack, ending up in consumer machines. Two massively costly mistakes when it came to planing the future of CPUs. Honestly, I hope Intel properly compensated the team behind the P6, an architecture so good that it was essentially brought back a year after release to after those 2 failures.

    OTOH, it's kind of amazing that AMD survived the Bulldozer years, since their margin for error is much smaller than Intel's. Good thing they bought ATI, since I'm not sure the company survives without the money they made from graphics cards and consoles...
  • JohanAnandtech - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Thank you for the kudos and sympathy. It was indeed hot! At 39°C/102°F, the server was off.

    I agree - I too admire the no-nonsense leadership of Lisa Su. Focus, careful execution and customer centric.
  • WaltC - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    AMD has proven once again that Intel can be beaten, and soundly, too...;) The myth of the indestructible Intel is forever shattered, and Intel's CPU architectures are so old they creak and are riddled with holes, imo. Where would Intel have put us, if there'd been no AMD? You like Rdram, you like Itanium, just for starters? You like paying through the nose? That's where Intel wanted to go in its never-ending quest to monopolize the market! AMD stopped all of that by offering an alternative path the market was happy to take--a path that didn't involve emulators and tossing out your software library just to give Intel a closed bus! Intel licensed AMD's x86-64, among other things--and they flourished when AMD dropped the ball. I chalk all that up to AMD going through a succession of horrible CEOs--people who literally had no clue! Remember the guy who ran AMD for awhile who concluded it made sense for AMD to sell Intel servers...!? Man, I thought AMD was probably done! There's just no substitute for first-class management at the top--Su was the beginning of the AMD renaissance! Finally! As a chip manufacturer, Intel will either learn how to exist in a competitive market or the company over time will simply fade away. I often get the feeling that Intel these days is more interested in the financial services markets than in the computer hardware markets. While Intel was busy milking its older architectures and raking in the dough, AMD was busy becoming a real competitor once again! What a difference the vision at the top, or the lack of it, makes.
  • aryonoco - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    That dude was Rory Read, and while the SeaMicro acquisition didn't work out, he did some great work and restructured AMD and in many ways saved the company while dealing with the Bulldozer disaster.

    Rory stablized the finances of the company by lowering costs over 30%, created the semi-custom division that enabled them to win the contracts for both the Xbox and PS4, creating a stable stream of revenue. Of course Rory's greatest accomplishment was hiring Lisa Su and then grooming her to become the CEO.

    Rory was a transitional CEO and he did exactly what was required of him. If there is a CEO that should be blamed for AMD's woes, it's Dirk Meyer.
  • aryonoco - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Forgot to mention, Rory also hired Kim Keller to design K12, and in effect he started the project that would later on become Zen.

    Of course Lisa deserves all the glory from then on. She has been an exceptional leader, bringing focus and excelling at execution, things that AMD always traditionally lacked.
  • tamalero - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    Id Blame Hector Ruiz first.
    It was his crown to lose during the Athlon 64 era, and he simply didn't have anything to show. Making the Athlon 64 core arch a one hit wonder for more than a decade.
  • MarcusTaz - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Another site's article that starts with an F stated that Rome runs hot and uses 1.4 volts, above TMSC recommended 1.3 volt. Did you need to run 1.4 volts for these tests?
  • evernessince - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Well 1st, that 1.3v figure is from TSMC's mobile focused 7nm LPP node. Zen 2 is made on the high performance 7nm node, not the mobile focused LPP. Whatever publication you read didn't do their homework. TSMC has not published information on their high performance node and I think it rather arrogant to give AMD an F based on an assumption. As if AMD engineers are stupid enough to put dangerous voltages through their CPUs that would result in a company sinking lawsuit. It makes zero sense.

    FYI all AMD 3000 series processors go up to 1.4v stock. Given that these are server processors, they will run hot. After all, more cores = more heat. It's the exact same situation for Intel server processors. The only difference here is that AMD is providing 50 - 100% more performance in the same or less power consumption at 40% less cost.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    You reading Fudzilla?
  • Kevin G - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    AMD is back. They have the performance crown again and have decided to lap the competition with what can be described as an embarrassing price/performance comparison to Intel. The only thing they need to do is be able to meet demand.

    One thing I wish they would have done is added quad socket support. Due to the topology necessary, intersocket bandwidth would be a concern at higher core counts but if you just need lots of memory, those low end 8 core chips would have been fine (think memcache or bulk NVMe storage).

    With the topology improvements, I also would have liked AMD to try something creative: a quad chip + low clocked/low voltage Vega 20 in the same package all linked together via Infinity Fabric. That would be something stunning for HPC compute. I do see AMD releasing some GPU in a server socket at some point for this market as things have been aligning in this direction for sometime.

    Supporting something like CCIX or OpenCAPI also would have been nice. A nod toward my previous point, even enabling Infinity Fabric to Vega 20 compute cards instead of PCIe 4.0 would have been yet another big step for AMD as that'd permit full coherency between the two chips without additional overhead.

    I think it would be foolish to ignore AVX-512 for Zen 3, even if the hardware they run it one continues to use 256 bit wide SIMD units. ISA parity is important even if they don't inherently show much of a performance gain (though considering the clock speed drops seen in Sky Lake-SP, if AMD could support AVX-512 at the clocks they're able to sustain at AVX2 on Zen 2, they might pull off an overall throughput win).

    With regards to Intel, they have Cooper Lake due later this year. If Intel was wise, they'd use that as a means to realign their pricing structure and ditch the memory capacity premium. Everything else Intel can do in the short term is flex their strong packaging techniques and push integrated accelerators: on package fabric, FPGA, Optane DIMMs etc. Intel can occupy several lucrative niches in important, growing fields with that they have in-house right now but they need to get them to market and at competitive prices. Otherwise it is AMD's game for the next 12 to 15 months until Ice Lake-SP arrives to bring back the competitive landscape. It isn't even certain that Intel can score a clean win either as Zen 3 based chips may start to arrive in the same time frame.
  • bobdvb - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I think a four compute node, 2U, dual processor Epyc Rome combined with Mellanox ConnextX-6 VPI, should be quite frisky for HPC.
  • JohanAnandtech - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    "One thing I wish they would have done is added quad socket support. "
    Really? That is extremely small niche market with very demanding customers. Why would you expect AMD to put so much effort in an essentially dead end market?
  • KingE - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    > While standalone compression and decompression are not real world benchmarks (at least as far as servers go), servers have to perform these tasks as part of a larger role (e.g. database compression, website optimization).

    Containerized apps are usually delivered via large, compressed filesystem layers. For latency sensitive-applications, e.g. scale-from-zero serverless, single- and lightly-threaded decompression performance is a larger-than-expected consideration.
  • RSAUser - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Usually the decompression overhead is minimal there.
  • KingE - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Sure, if you can amortize it over the life of a container, or can benefit from cached pulls. Otherwise, as is fairly common in an event-based 'serverless' architecture, it's a significant contributor to long-tail latency.
  • Thud2 - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link

    Will socket-to-socket IF link bandwidth management allow for better dual GPU performance?
  • wabash9000 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    "The city may be built on seven hills, but Rome's 8x8-core chiplet design is a truly cultural phenomenon of the semiconductor industry."
    The city of Rome was actually built on 8 hills, even their celebration of the 7 hills had 8 listed. Something got confused and it was actually 8 hills. Search "QI: Series O Overseas" on youtube
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    That episode is consequently where my onowdge about the 7 Hills / 8 Hills comes from.
  • abufrejoval - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    sic transit gloria mundi... cum youtube non scolae discimus...

    I learned in Latin class, first of four foreign languages I learned in school (but I know that doesn't impress anyone from Belgium with three domestic ones :-)
  • ZolaIII - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Seams that EPYC 7702P will be a absolute workstation killer deal. Hopefully AMD won't screw up with motherboard's this time around.
  • ET - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I found the EPYC 7262 the most interesting SKU. By L3 cache size, that would be 4 chiplets, each offering only 2 cores. From the specs it looks like AMD has no shortage of 4 core chiplets, but I didn't expect 2 core chiplets.
  • Rudde - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    L3 cache is shared inside a CCX (4 cores), which suggests that every CCX has only one core available, but 16MB of L3 cache. I.e. every core has private L3 cache.
  • colonelclaw - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    But can it serve Crysis Battle Royale?
  • shing3232 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I am pretty sure it can lol
  • BigMamaInHouse - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    @ Johan De Gelas will u test @240W TDP config?
  • JohanAnandtech - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Elaborate your interest in that, as it is only tad higher than the official 225W TDP?
  • BigMamaInHouse - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    AMD is offering 225W/240W TDP option in bios to it's customers and lets them to decide if to go with better cooling and use 240W or stay at 225W, even though it looks small increase- in reality it should offer almost 10% more power headroom to the CPU chiplets -if you consider that the 225W is including ~55W for I/O die, so extra 15W for the chiplets alone should offer nice bump in clocks.
  • Gondalf - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Strange.....the article forgot Cooper Lake, out in Q4 this year and at major customers (for revenue) from at least two quarters. Same applies to Ice Lake SP that is in evaluation to OEMs right now.

    From the article looks like Intel is sleeping, but it is not at all. Ummm maybe Intel is snobbing some guys here not giving samples to test?? or informations to share??
    Bet Intel have to argue about the test suite or about compiler settings.........
  • JohanAnandtech - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Because Cooper Lake is still "warmed up Skylake" (unless I missed something). AFAIK it is Cascade Lake with 8 mem channels - so the 56-core socketed will probably be still in the 350-400W TDP range. So the SPEC benchmarks will look better, but getting that kind of server running inside your datacenter does not look very attractive: complex and thus expensive boards, high cooling and power distribution required. Looks like a chip that wins back benchmarks, but is too much hassle to roll out in high quantities.
  • Null666666 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Wondering when 4-8 socket ice lake is due.
  • steepedrostee - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    if i had to guess who is more full of crapola, i would think you
  • Smell This - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link


    Pooper Lake?

    Cascade is obviously, The Mistake By The Lake

    Chipzillah will certainly strike back but it reminds me of the old 'virgin' joke. "My first wife was an OB/GYN, and all she wanted to do was look at it. My second wife was a psychiatrist, and all she wanted to do was talk about it, and ...

    My third wife was an Intel Fan Girl, and all she could say was, "Wait until next year!"

    HA!
  • RSAUser - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Do we finally have a contender to run Crysis on max?
  • Tunnah - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    I'd normally just ignore this but this really needs proofreading, There's multiple mistakes on every page, becomes a bit difficult to follow.
  • cerealspiller - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Well, 50% of the sentences in your post have a grammatical error, so I will just try to ignore it.
  • GreenReaper - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    He's a reader, not a writer. ;-)
  • Oliseo - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Pot. Meet Kettle.
  • steepedrostee - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    wow amd !
  • umano - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Intel people will welcome "Rome" like gladiators "Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant"
    I am really happy for Amd and I really hope their sells will be a lot more than they could ever dream.
    Because they become more than competitive with the most rightful strategy, just deliver an awesome product. The fact they think that they will just double their shares shows how sick the market(s) are. The epyc is faster, greener and way way cheaper.
  • 29a - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    "AMD does not blow fuses on cheaper SKUs to create artificial 'value' for buying more expensive SKUs"

    I like this guy, more reviews from him. He's not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him.
  • krumme - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Because he is feeded by another hand.
    Enjoy the objectivity by Johan as its is very rare these days. It's not easy for AT to post this stuff. So kudos to them.
  • hoohoo - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Nice review, but tbh I think you should run the AMD system as such, not limit it's RAM to what the Intel system maxes out at. I would not buy a system and configure it to limits of the competition: I would configure it to it's actual linits.
  • yankeeDDL - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Wow. "Blasted" is the only word that comes to mind. Good job AMD.
  • eastcoast_pete - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Thanks Johan and Ian! Impressive results, glad to see that AMD is once again making Intel sweat, all of which can only be good for us.
    Question: A bit out of left field, but why does AMD put the 7 nm dies in these close pairs, as opposed to leaving a little more space between them? Wouldn't thermals be better if each chip gets a little more "reserved" lid space? Just curious. Thanks!
  • sharath.naik - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Now since we finally are entering the era where a single server(Yes backup is addition) is enough for most of smaller organizations. There is one thing that is needed, OS limits/zones which can limit the cpus and memory built in, instead of using VMs. This will save a lot on resources wasted on booting up an entire OS for individual applications. Linux has the ability for targeting specific cpus but not sure windows has it. But there is a need for standardized way to limit resources by process and by user.
  • mdriftmeyer - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Agreed.
  • quorm - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    Is it possible you haven't heard of docker?
  • abufrejoval - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    or OpenVZ/Virtuozzo or quite simply cgroups. Can even nest them, including with VMs.
  • DillholeMcRib - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link

    destruction … Intel sat on their proverbial hands too long. It's over.
  • crotach - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    Bye Intel!!
  • AnonCPU - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    The gain in hmmer on EPYC with GCC8 is not due to TAGE predictor.
    Hmmer gains a lot on EPYC only because of GCC8.
    GCC8 vectorizer has been improved in GCC8 and hmmer gets vectorized heavily while it was not the case for GCC7. The same run on an Intel machine would have shown the same kind of improvement.
  • JohanAnandtech - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    Thanks, do you have a source for that? Interested in learning more!
  • AnonCPU - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link

    That should be due to the improvements on loop distribution:
    https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-8/changes.html

    "The classic loop nest optimization pass -ftree-loop-distribution has been improved and enabled by default at -O3 and above. It supports loop nest distribution in some restricted scenarios;"

    There are also some references here in what was missing for hmmer vectorization in GCC some years ago:
    https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-03/msg00012.html

    And a page where you can see that LLVM was missing (at least in 2015) a good loop distribution algo useful for hmmer:

    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&a...
  • AnonCPU - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link

    And more:
    https://community.arm.com/developer/tools-software...
  • just4U - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    I guess the question to ask now is can they churn these puppies out like no tomorrow? Is the demand there? What about other Hardware? Motherboards and the like..

    Do they have 100 000 of these ready to go? The window of opportunity for AMD is always fleeting.. and if their going to capitalize on this they need to be able to put the product out there.
  • name99 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link

    No obvious reason why not. The chiplets are not large and TSMC ships 200 million Apple chips a year on essentially the same process. So yields should be there.
    Manufacturing the chiplet assembly also doesn't look any different from the Naples assembly (details differ, yes, but no new envelopes being pushed: no much higher frequency signals or denser traces -- the flip side to that is that there's scope there for some optimization come Milan...)

    So it seems like there is nothing to obviously hold them back...
  • fallaha56 - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    Perhaps Hypertheading should be off on the Intel systems to better reflect eg Google’s reality / proper security standards now we know Intel isn’t secure?
  • Targon - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link

    That is why Google is going to be buying many Epyc based servers going forward. Mitigations do not mean a problem has been fixed.
  • imaskar - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link

    Why do you think AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. mitigated the vulnerabilities? They only patched Meltdown at most. All other things are too costly and hard to execute. They just don't care so much for your data. Too loose 2x cloud capacity for that? No way. And for security conscious serious customers they offer private clusters, so your workloads run on separate servers.
  • ballsystemlord - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link

    Spelling and grammar errors:

    "This happened in almost every OS, and in some cases we saw reports that system administrators and others had to do quite a bit optimization work to get the best performance out of the EPYC 7001 series."
    Missing "of":
    "This happened in almost every OS, and in some cases we saw reports that system administrators and others had to do quite a bit of optimization work to get the best performance out of the EPYC 7001 series."

    "...to us it is simply is ridiculous that Intel expect enterprise users to cough up another few thousand dollars per CPU for a model that supports 2 TB,..."
    Excess "is" and missing "s":
    "...to us it is simply ridiculous that Intel expects enterprise users to cough up another few thousand dollars per CPU for a model that supports 2 TB,..."

    "Although the 225W TDP CPUs needs extra heatspipes and heatsinks, there are still running on air cooling..."
    Excess "s" and incorrect "there",
    "Although the 225W TDP CPUs need extra heatspipes and heatsinks, they're still running on air cooling..."

    "The Intel L3-cache keeps latency consistingy low as long as you stay within the L3-cache."
    "consistently" not "consistingy":
    "The Intel L3-cache keeps latency consistently low as long as you stay within the L3-cache."

    "For example keeping a large part of the index in the cache improve performance..."
    Missing comma and missing "s" (you might also consider making cache plural, but you seem to be talking strictly about the L3):
    "For example, keeping a large part of the index in the cache improves performance..."

    "That is a real thing is shown by the fact that Intel states that the OLTP hammerDB runs 60% faster on a 28-core Intel Xeon 8280 than on EPYC 7601."
    Missing "it":
    "That it is a real thing is shown by the fact that Intel states that the OLTP hammerDB runs 60% faster on a 28-core Intel Xeon 8280 than on EPYC 7601."
    In general, the beginning of the sentance appears quite poorly worded, how about:
    "That L3 cache latency is a matter for concern is shown by the fact that Intel states that the OLTP hammerDB runs 60% faster on a 28-core Intel Xeon 8280 than on EPYC 7601."

    "In NPS4, the NUMA domains are reported to software in such a way as it chiplets always access the near (2 channels) DRAM."
    Missing "s":
    "In NPS4, the NUMA domains are reported to software in such a way as its chiplets always access the near (2 channels) DRAM."

    "The fact that the EPYC 7002 has higher DRAM bandwidth is clearly visible."
    Wrong numbers (maybet you ment, series?):
    "The fact that the EPYC 7742 has higher DRAM bandwidth is clearly visible."

    "...but show very significant improvements on EPYC 7002."
    Wrong numbers (maybet you ment, series?):
    "...but show very significant improvements on EPYC 7742."

    "Using older garbage collector because they happen to better at Specjbb"
    Badly worded.
    "Using an older garbage collector because it happens to be better at Specjbb"

    "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 a 40% lower price."
    "Up to" requires 1 metric, not 2. Try:
    "For those with little time: at the high end with socketed x86 CPUs, AMD offers you from 50 up to 100% higher performance while offering a 40% lower price."
  • wrkingclass_hero - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    What does AMD have to do to get a Gold or Platinum recommendation?
  • oRAirwolf - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link

    This is a good question
  • imaskar - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    Single thread performance is very important for those who lives in cloud. A quick example: suppose I provision 2 core/4gig vm (this is of course hyperthreads). And on AWS I have a choice - m5 and m5a, where AMD is cheaper. What do I sacrifice? Not really throughput, because you don't run your prod workloads at 100% CPU. But there is the latency. If those cores clocked lower, I would get the same amount of responses, but slower. And since in microservice world you have a chain of calls, you get this decrease 10 times. Is it worth it?
    That was the case for 1st gen EPYC. Would 2nd gen have latency parity?
  • notashill - Sunday, August 11, 2019 - link

    It's hard to say until the cloud instances actually launch.

    The current m5a instances are using a custom SKU which is clocked at 2.5GHz max boost.

    Rome's IPC is ~15% higher and clock speeds are all around higher so single threaded performance should be quite a bit better, but ultimately the exact numbers will depend on which SKUs the cloud vendors decide to use and how high they clock.
  • duploxxx - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link

    did you actually ever work with hypervisors?

    there are other things than raw clock speed.... its all about scheduling and when there are more cores / socket available the scheduling is more relaxed, less ready time..... EPYC generation 1 is already awesome for hypervisor way better choice than most Intel counter parts for sure if you look at socket cost... but than again I am probably talking to a typical retard ****
  • JoeBraga - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link

    Can you Explain better? But the license isn't bought by the quantity of coresor Per socket?
  • imaskar - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link

    He probably talks about VmWare, which is licensed per socket, not per core. So with EPYC gen2 you need twice less licenses for the same cloud capacity (assuming cores are equal).
  • JoeBraga - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link

    Now I understood
  • imaskar - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link

    Rather than calling others retards, you could first dig a little deeper into an issue. No, I don't work with hypervisors directly, I'm from the other side. I write software and I want good latency (not insane one like for HFT, but still a good one). Because for throughput we could just spin one more instance. You can't buy latency horizontally.
    I'm not taking numbers out of the blue. There is a benchmark for AMD instances vs Intel instances on AWS. I'm not sure if we are allowed to post links to other resources here. Put this string into Google and you will surely find it: "A Look At The AMD EPYC Performance On The Amazon EC2 Cloud". Despite this article being very enthusiastic about those instances, you can really see that per core performance on Intel is better, meaning better latencies for web apps.
    I will probably write my own set of benchmarks, because that one seems to completely ignore web servers. I am very enthusiastic about AMD instances, but they are definitely not a no-brainer.
  • quadibloc - Tuesday, August 13, 2019 - link

    The new Ryzen chips compete well with what Intel is currently producing. But while they doubled AVX 2 support, so as to match what Intel has, Ice Lake will double that - as has been known for some time. So if this is what AMD thought would be competitive with Ice Lake, as Forrest Norrod said, AMD was not trying hard enough - and they're just lucky Ice Lake was late. AMD's position relative to Intel with its previous generations of Ryzens seems to be the limit of their ambitions. Combine that with Intel reacting to its current issues, and it looks to me that AMD will have to rethink some aspects of its strategy to avoid Intel being ahead when it comes time for next year's chips from both companies.
  • JoeBraga - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link

    It can happen if Intel uses the new archtecture Sunny Cove and MCM/Chiplet design instead of Monolithic Design
  • SanX - 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 amd
    Amd 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!

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