Items tagged with epyc
Earlier this month, a little-known Israeli security company named CTS Labs disclosed a number of vulnerabilities that affect AMD's Zen-based processor family. The exploits -- Masterkey, Ryzenfall, Fallout, and Chimera -- involve the Secure Processor found onboard Ryzen and EPYC products and the supporting Ryzen chipset. At the time, AMD provided the following statement: We are actively investigating and analyzing its findings. This company was previously unknown to AMD and we find it unusual for a security firm to publish its research to the press without providing a reasonable amount of time for...
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Given the industry-wide panic that was unleashed following the disclosure of the Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities (with Intel taking the brunt of the heat), many are on edge about the potential for similar exploits to be discovered in other products. Unfortunately, for those that are running AMD's current Zen-based processor architecture, researchers claim to have discovered over a dozen new critical security flaws that affect the Ryzen and EPYC processor families. According to CTS-Labs, a fledgling Israeli security firm that first reported on the chip flaws, vulnerabilities...
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Baidu isn’t a huge name here in the U.S., but in China, it is a behemoth internet search provider. Baidu isn’t all about search though and much like Google, it has fingers in lots of pies including artificial intelligence (AI). Baidu and AMD have announced a partnership that will see the firm deploying single-socket AMD EPYC platforms for its ABC Datacenters. ABC stands for AI, big data, and cloud computing services. The single socket EPYC platforms will be used by Baidu to optimize and deliver storage and computer services to customers. AMD notes that Baidu plans to roll out expanded...
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Intel recently touted an array of benchmarks comparing its latest Xeon Scalable Processors (Skylake-SP) in a two-socket configuration to the performance of a similarly configured 2P Xeon E5026xx v4 (Broadwell-EP) system and a competing dual socket AMD EPYC 7601-based system. In discussing the benchmarks, however, Intel makes it clear that the results are all externally published and that the they are third-party auditable, to ensure no one can cry foul when comparing the results. It should be noted, however, that Intel used its own compilers for these tests. On the AMD system, a...
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As part of AMD's comeback tour into the high-end market sector, it released new CPU and GPU architectures, Zen and Vega respectively. And with Zen, AMD has been focused on attacking every market sector, including mainstream desktops (Ryzen 3/5/7), high-end desktops (Threadripper), mobile (Ryzen 5 Mobile, or Raven Ridge), and server (EPYC). Building upon that latter segment, AMD is readying a new Snowy Owl platform for embedded system-on-chip (SoC) applications.Snowy Owl is the codename for Epyc 3251, an Epyc 3000 series chip that will be AMD's first Zen-based SoC. It will sit in an embedded SoC...
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AMD's Zen architecture has proven to be a boon for the company in its fight against Intel. AMD first gave us a taste of how powerful Zen is with the Ryzen 7 processors, which were followed up by Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3. Later, we were taken by surprise with Ryzen Threadripper, which offers up to 16 cores of workstation-class computing greatness. Finally, AMD pulled the wraps off EPYC, which is a server-class processor family offering up to 32-cores and 64 threads of compute power. It's that last product family that is the focus of our attention today. Canard PC Hardware, a French website with a pretty...
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Over the weekend, we talked about an issue surrounding AMD's Ryzen-based processors on Unix-based OSes. Today, we learn a lot more about what's going on, as well as which products are actually affected. But first, let's get the upside out of the way: this bug is rare, and requires very specific conditions. The vast majority of users are not going to experience an issue, but it's at least an issue to be aware of. With almost comical timing, SMT issues surrounding both FreeBSD and Linux were outed at around the same time, although it's now been confirmed that the issues are different. Through exhaustive...
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It's starting to look like there's an inherent bug with AMD's Zen-based chips that is causing issues on Unix-based operating systems, with both Linux and FreeBSD confirmed. The bug doesn't just affect Ryzen desktop chips, but also AMD's enterprise EPYC chips. It seems safe to assume that Threadripper will bundle it in, as well. It's not entirely clear what is causing the issue, but it's related to the CPU being maxed out in operations, thus causing data to get shifted around in memory, ultimately resulting in unstable software. If the bug is exercised a certain way, it can even cause machines to...
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Ever since AMD launched its Ryzen processors for the desktop, many security conscious users have pleaded with the company to open source its PSP - no, not the portable console, but rather its "Platform Security Processor". This chip is found on most AMD platforms from 2013 on, and behaves much like Intel's Management Engine does: it offers simple low-level access to the computer. Both AMD and Intel share the same message about these unique chips; they are there to keep us protected. Because the OS can't see what the PSP or IME is doing, though, the user will likewise be oblivious to the chip's...
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It feels a little weird to write about performance results for AMD's EPYC processors and not have to tie the word "leak" into it. As we covered just last week, AMD has finally unleashed its hugely anticipated EPYC processor line for the server market, and to say it's long overdue would be a gross understatement. There is no doubt that Ryzen is important for AMD's desktop aspirations, but EPYC is hugely important for its chance to steal back enterprise market share from Intel. Today, we get a glimpse of some of what EPYC can deliver, as some results have hit SiSoftware's Sandra repository....
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Today marks the launch of AMD's EPYC family of processors for data center servers. Based on the company's Zen microarchitecture, it has become abundantly clear that AMD was targeting the lucrative data center market first and foremost with its new CPU architecture and the highly scalable Naples platform that leverages it. Of course Zen scales well for client/consumer desktop applications, as we've seen with AMD's successful Ryzen processor launch. However, the data center is near and dear to the AMD's heart, due to significantly higher chip pricing and better profit margins; not to mention the...
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Things are definitely heating up in the processor market thanks to a newly reinvigorated AMD. Intel has dominated the performance and sales charts for years, but AMD has seized an opportunity to hit back at the chip giant with its Zen processor architecture. The first strike came with Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 processors aimed at Intel’s bread and butter Core family. Next, AMD will go toe-to-toe with Intel in the HEDT market with Ryzen Threadripper. Last but not least, AMD plans to carpet bomb Intel’s lucrative Xeon family with its aptly-named EPYC server processors. Although we’ve presented our readers...
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AMD’s Financial Analyst Day is currently taking place, and one of the biggest announcements that has come out so far is the marketing name for the company’s Naples datacenter chip. AMD CEO Lisa Su announced that the new chips are branded EPYC, and she held one of the massive chips in her hands for all to see. AMD is going for the jugular when it comes to comparisons with Intel’s Xeon family, providing up to 128 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, which Su says “allows you to connect more GPUs directly to the CPU than any other solution in the industry." As we’ve previously reported, EPYC scales to 32 cores/64...
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