Glenn Berry takes a look at whether we want to invest in AMD’s latest server-grade processor:
On August 7, 2019, AMD finally unveiled their new 7nm EPYC 7002 Series of server processors, formerly code-named “Rome” at the AMD EPYC Horizon Event in San Francisco. This is the second generation EPYC server processor that uses the same Zen 2 architecture as the AMD Ryzen 3000 Series desktop processors. These new processors are socket compatible with the previous generation AMD EPYC 7001 Series processors, so they will work in existing model servers (with a BIOS update). Despite that, you will need a new model server to be able to use PCIe 4.0 support from the newer processors.
The AMD EPYC 7002 series includes 19 public launch SKUs that have anywhere from 8 to 64 physical cores, plus SMT, for twice the number of logical cores per processor. There are fourteen SKUs that will work in both one-socket and two-socket servers. There are also five less expensive processor SKUs (which have a “P” suffix) that only work in one-socket servers. This processor family has enough compute horsepower, memory bandwidth and capacity, and I/O bandwidth to support large server workloads on a single-socket server.
It certainly looks competitive. And that’s a great thing for consumers, even those who never make the switch, as it will force Intel to up its game.