PATREONItems tagged with epyc
Zen 3-based Ryzen processors showed some really outstanding performance on the desktop when we looked at the Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X. In the high-performance computing server space, though, 12 to 16 cores is the bare minimum, and systems only scale up from there. AMD has yet to announce its Zen 3 EPYC CPU platform, codenamed Milan, but configuration and performance scores are starting to leak online. The core count is purportedly huge and the performance looks to be through the roof. Thanks to leaker ExecutableFix on Twitter, we've learned that the EPYC 7763 is a Zen 3 chip with 64 cores, giving it 128 hardware threads with symmetric multithreading, which is paired up with 256 MB of L3...
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With so much attention being paid to graphics card leaks as of late, it could be easy to forget that new CPUs are on the horizon, too. That would be a shame, because Zen 3 is arguably just as interesting, considering the gains AMD has already made with its Zen architecture up to this point. While we continue to wait for Zen 3, a new leaks suggests AMD's upcoming architecture will give its EPYC server CPUs a sizeable boost in performance compared to its current-generation EPYC processors. We have heard quite a bit about Zen 3, most of which is unofficial information. Not all of it, however—AMD has made very clear (on multiple occasions) that Zen 3 will be arriving before the end of this...
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AMD just reported its Q2 2020 earnings during a call this afternoon and the company delivered impressive results, spurred by solid sales growth. Specifically, AMD pulled in record revenue for Q2, which came in at $1.93 billion (a 23 percent year-over-year increase), while gross margins increased by 3 percentage points YoY to 44 percent. Non-GAAP income came in at $216 million compared to $124 million during Q2 2019, while earnings per share were dialed-in at $0.18, compared to a street consensus of $0.16. This was an increase of $0.10 per share compared to the same quarter in 2019. How AMD achieved this growth is where it gets interesting, however. AMD attributed its stellar quarter to...
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The big tech news this week is the official unveiling of Ampere, following months and months (years, really) of rumors. From the confines of his swank kitchen, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang dished up some details about the next-gen GPU, at least as it pertains to the data center high performance computing (HPC) markets. Following the announcement, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su revealed another interesting nugget—NVIDIA's DGX A100 servers are packing EPYC "Rome" processors inside rather than Intel Xeon chips. This is yet another feather for AMD's cap, which has been amassing them ever since Zen arrived (and in particular, the latest iteration, Zen 2). Proud to have @AMDServer #EPYC “Rome” CPUs...
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AMD is the latest tech company to pledge millions of dollars in aid to support research institutions that are trying to better understand and develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Last week, Intel announced a $50 million initiative, and this week, AMD has announced its own $15 million donation to "accelerate medical research on COVID-19 and other diseases." In this case, that $15 million donation consists of some of the best enterprise computing hardware on the market: EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct GPU accelerators. EPYC processors are a well-known for their raw power and multi-threaded performance, with Zen 2-based configurations offering up to 64-core and 128-thread muscle. AMD...
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AMD has been making some steady gains in desktop market share with its Ryzen 3000 processors, and has even showed some great promise with its newly released Ryzen 4000 mobile processors. But another segment that is incredibly crucial to AMD with respect to margins is the server market. Intel has long been a dominant force in this sector, but AMD is two generations in with EPYC, and is in a stronger position than it has been in years. Zen 2-based EPYC 7002 processors have already been gaining attention from customers with configurations topping out with 64 cores/128 threads and today, AMD is introducing three new EPYC 7Fx2 Series processors that look to put...
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Losing a bit of market share to Ryzen should have been a wake up call for Intel, and to some extent, it was—Intel said last September it was vowing to "aggressively compete in all segments." The troubled path to 10-nanometer production while rival AMD racks up wins with its 7nm tech should have been a wake up call as well. And lest another wake up call is still needed, Cloudflare is breaking up with Intel after a long relationship and courting AMD exclusively for its Gen X servers. Cloudflare is yet another feather in AMD's cap, and it speaks to the stiff competition Intel is facing against a rival that, quite frankly, struggled to compete in meaningful ways before Zen. But that was before,...
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When it comes to its highly profitable Xeon Scalable server processors, Intel has been on the defensive as of late versus its chief rival AMD. While INTC has an overwhelmingly large lead in server processor market share, it also is looking to protect that lead with the release of its Cascade Lake Refresh processors. This is not a complete retooling of Intel's second-generation server processors, but rather some skillful optimization of features, speeds, feeds and pricing to make them more compelling for data center and enterprise customers. While Intel makes no comparisons to AMD’s EPYC 7002 processors in this release, the company does say that this new Cascade Lake Refresh offers up to...
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AMD's share of the enterprise market has been growing steadily thanks to its Zen- and Zen 2-based EPYC 7001 and EPYC 7002 processors. The company's current EPYC 7002 processors are available in up to 64-core configurations, and has garnered the attention of big-name companies like Google and Twitter. Google today announced that its new N2D VMs are now available to the public, and that they run on 2nd generation AMD EPYC 7002 processors. Google is indicating that the new N2D VMs are perfect for general purpose workloads that "require a balance of compute and memory, like web applications and databases" from a cost and feature perspective. The search and cloud giant is...
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AMD really struck a goldmine when it launched its original Zen processor architecture back in 2017. Years before that launch, AMD played second fiddle to Intel in the consumer and enterprise processor markets with regards to performance and market share. However, the Zen microarchitecture proved that AMD was able to compete head-to-head with Intel on the performance front, while using its advantage in process technology to undercut its longtime rival on price. We're now learning that AMD's efforts are continuing to pay off, thanks in part to its Zen 2 architecture that launched in mid-2019. Mercury Research has posted its Q4 2019 CPU market share numbers, and AMD has gained share across...
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Normally we would not be all that interested in a random firmware update for a 1U rack server. However, ASUS appears to have tipped the pending launch of four additional AMD EPYC "Rome" processors with the latest firmware update for its RX700A-E9-RS12, which packs a dozen 2.5-inch hot-swap drive bays and sells for $1,649 and up. The related CPU support document (as first spotted by Twitter user @momomo_us) lists the unannounced server chips as being supported with BIOS revision 0401. These run the gamut from 8 cores to 64 cores, depending on the specific SKU. Have a look... Starting at the top (in terms of core count), the EPYC 7662 features 64 cores and 128 threads with a 2.0GHz base clock....
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Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has issued a dire warning for its customers looking to order new server systems this year. We already know that Intel has been battling ongoing CPU shortages, and it has attempted several remedies to free up supplies. However, HPE is indicating that things aren't looking too good for the full calendar year 2020 with respect to Xeon server CPU availability. According to a statement provided to The Register, supplies are especially tight for Intel's Xeon (Cascade Lake) processors, which launched in 2019. The statement reads: Based on demand, we are expecting supply will remain constrained through 2020. Server platforms which use these processors are affected....
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AMD has been making some serious inroads on Intel's market share in the lucrative server market for the past two years. It all started with the company's first-generation Zen-based EPYC 7001 processors, with the second assault coming in 2019 with the Zen 2-based EPYC 7002 processors. AMD wants to keep that momentum going, so it reached deep into the heart of Intel to snatch out a top exec with a strong background in enterprise computing and engineering execution: Dan McNamara. McNamara previously served as senior vice president and general manager for Intel’s Network and Custom Logic Group. Before that, he was the senior vice president of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group....
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AMD hasn't been in this good of a position in years, and it has its Zen processor architecture mostly to thank for it. First introduced in 2017 with the first-generation Ryzen 1000 family, the Zen family has expanded to cover consumer desktop, HEDT, mobile, and data center platforms. AMD's newest generation of processors, which were introduced mid-year, are using the company's 7nm Zen 2 architecture. Those new Zen 2 processors -- Ryzen 3000 on the desktop, EPYC 7002 for enterprise -- are providing strong competition for Intel, and as a result, has helped AMD to gain market share and clout with customers. As of today, AMD stock is hovering at an all-time high of over $46 in intraday trading. Over...
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Advanced Micro Devices is about to put another feather in its cap, that being double-digit market share in the lucrative data center market. Speaking at the USB Global Tech Conference, Ruth Cotter, senior vice president of marketing at AMD, said the expectation is the latest EPYC "Rome" processors will push the company to a 10 percent share by the second quarter of 2020. This would be a tremendous achievement, though still well short of historical levels, which AMD said was around 26 percent. At present, AMD is about about a 7 percent share. Cotter says getting to 10 percent would give AMD credibility in being able to soar back to historical levels. "Our target is to get to 10 percent share by...
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AMD delivered a solid punch across the jaw to Intel with its Zen and Zen+ processor architectures, while the Zen 2 could be seen as crushing body blow. Could Zen 3 deliver a stunning uppercut to pummel its long-time rival into submission? That remains to be seen, but recent comments from Forrest Norrod, AMD's General Manager for the Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group, give us some hope that Zen 3 will deliver another winning performance for the company. While speaking with TheStreet, Norrod gives us some critical insight into the Zen 3 Milan EPYC processors that will be coming out in 2020. First and foremost, Norrod confirmed that Zen 3 will feature an all-new architecture,...
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Update 11/6/19: Since publishing this article, Intel has gone back and updated its blog post on Medium to clarify a few points raised by Kennedy. The most significant one is adding benchmark data from an updated version of GROMACS (2019.4), as that version is better optimized to leverage processors based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture. In doing so, Intel states it "found no material difference" to data it originally obtained. "Intel is committed to always provide fair, transparent, and accurate performance results and would not intentionally mislead. We received feedback on our original blog and appreciate the community’s passion about performance and the accuracy of benchmarks. Taking the...
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Like a basketball player that has suddenly caught fire and can't miss a shot, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) finds itself in a zone, the result of hard work and capable leadership guiding the company's success. Part of what's interesting about this is it was not always a given AMD would get to this point. It has, though, and looking ahead, AMD is confident about where it is going, too. This might be lost on some investors. Coming off its most successful quarter (in terms of revenue) since 2005, AMD's share price actually declined a tick. Such is the wild world of investing. A look back over time, however, paints a different picture. You don't even have too look back far—at the end of September,...
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To say AMD is doing well these days is a bit of an understatement, like saying Larry Bird was an okay basketball player back in the day. So, how is AMD really doing? Bolstered by its latest generation Ryzen desktop and EPYC server processors, AMD just capped off its most lucrative quarter in over a decade, with $1.8 billion in revenue. That figure represents 9 percent year-over-year increase, and you can double that percentage gain to 18 percent if comparing to the previous quarter, which yielded $1.53 billion in revenue. After paying the bills, AMD was left with a $219 million profit for the third quarter of 2019, compared to $150 million in the same quarter a year ago. "Our first full quarter...
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The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) center announced it has contracted with Cray to build a supercomputer based on AMD's latest generation EPYC "Rome" server processors. This will be the second generation of ARCHER (Advanced Research Computing High End Resource), with ARCHER2 being much more powerful than its predecessor. "ARCHER2 should be capable on average of over eleven times the science throughput of ARCHER, based on benchmarks which use five of the most heavily used codes on the current service," UKRI stated in an email. The original ARCHER supercomputer entered the scene in 2013 and resides at the University of Edinburgh. It is based on the Cray XC30, with Intel Xeon hardware inside....
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AMD is riding high on its Zen 2 CPU architecture, both on the desktop and in the server sector, and has managed to steal some market share from Intel because of its recent success. Lest anyone think AMD will now rest on its laurels, the company put that notion to rest during a recent HPC-AI Advisory Council conference in the UK. It was there that AMD revealed some interesting details about its future plans for its EPYC server chips. Zen 3 EPYC CPUs (codenamed "Milan") loom in the distance, and further out sits Zen 4 EPYC silicon (codenamed "Genoa"). It may feel a bit early to discuss server processors that are up to two generations away, given that AMD is currently scoring wins with its Zen 2...
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There's no question that Intel has a commanding lead when it comes to processors used in servers and high-end workstations with its Xeon family. However, AMD has slowly been making inroads with its first-generation Zen-based EPYC 7001 processors, and it is looking to further dig into Intel's lead with Zen 2-based EPYC 7002 processors. A new report coming out of Taiwan is suggesting that orders for EPYC 7002 processor have been so strong thus far that AMD could see a dramatic upswing in market share during 2020 as more vendors adopt the processors. If market analysts are correct, AMD could be looking at a 10 percent share of the server market by the end of 2020. AMD's share of the server...
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