Google / Azure announce they'll be deploying AMD 2nd Gen EPYC "Rome" in Production

[muskie]

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"Google was the first to deploy Rome in a production datacenter environment"

 

 

Looks like AMD has come out swinging with the "Rome" release.

 

During the launch, both Azure and Google have confirmed that they will be offering AMD 2nd Gen EPYC "Rome" CPUs in their data centers, with Google being the first to have them already live in production for Google Internal systems. Azure and Google have announced that they will soon be available on their respective hyperscale cloud platforms soon.

 

 

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Depending on just how many systems Google eventually orders, this could be just the kind of big win that AMD needs to start to carve out a piece of the x86 server market

 

I'm interested to see how performance / pricing stacks up here on GCP and other platforms as they take this up — Intel has been the standard for quite some time now, and with the recent issues (Spectre, Meltdown etc.) it good to see a real alternative taking shape in the industry.

Sources: 

• https://www.anandtech.com/show/14724/the-amd-epyc-rome-launch-live-blog
• https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-processors-come-to-google-and-to-google-cloud
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based-azure-virtual-machines/

 

[vanished]

I think much of the server market was seriously put off by the numerous security issues Intel has incurred over the last few years, starting with Spectre and Meltdown but more recently the other problems like ZombieLoad, etc.  In a market where security and reliability are king, it's a really bad look for Intel.

 

On top of that, not only is EPYC significantly outperforming Intel's top products, but at a significantly lower TDP as well.  With efficiency being another huge consideration for servers, it's easy to see why this is a big win for AMD.

 

Then there's the cost. AMD is selling these chips at a small portion of the Intel "equivalent" (as if there even is one) - roughly 1/3 last I checked, much like the enthusiast (8+ core) desktop space.  But, in light of everything else, one could easily imagine how even if Intel gave away CPUs for free, many companies would prefer to use AMD at this time.  As it was once put, "If I was working in sales for Intel, I don't know how I would sell this turd".

[realpetertdm]

AMD Epyc is really living up to its name

[The Benjamins]

In a Q A its confirmed that 3rd gen Epyc will also have socket compatibility which implies that zen 3 ryzen should also have the same.

 

Anandtech review

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14694/amd-rome-epyc-2nd-gen/

 

 

 

 

 

[yolosnail]

rip intel

[realpetertdm]

4 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

In a Q A its confirmed that 3rd gen Epyc will also have socket compatibility which implies that zen 3 ryzen should also have the same.

 

Anandtech review

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14694/amd-rome-epyc-2nd-gen/

 

 

 

 

 

64 cores on a single CPU?

Well RIP Intel, they only have their mobile processors left

[ravenshrike]

16 hours ago, The Benjamins said:

In a Q A its confirmed that 3rd gen Epyc will also have socket compatibility which implies that zen 3 ryzen should also have the same.

Hmmm. Well, that actually makes an x570 platform somewhat sensible to buy now since there will be an actual generational upgrade and the chips should be competitive enough long enough to actually need PCIe 4.0 in the gaming space.

[Fasauceome]

14 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

In a Q A its confirmed that 3rd gen Epyc will also have socket compatibility which implies that zen 3 ryzen should also have the same.

It would be a shame to not have socket compatibility, AMD did promise compatibility through 2020

[The Benjamins]

9 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

It would be a shame to not have socket compatibility, AMD did promise compatibility through 2020

ya but its just nice for confirmations, but zen 4 should be DDR5 and stuff.

[MMKing]

26 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

ya but its just nice for confirmations, but zen 4 should be DDR5 and stuff.

Hopefully this means Ryzen 4000 will be on the AM4, while the Zen 3, Ryzen 5000 will be on a new DDR5 platform in 2021.

[muskie]

Interestingly both Azure and GCP have announced they'll be offering services based on Rome - wondering if/when AWS will follow suit

[muskie]

 

With reviews now being published on the new CPUs, it seems like AMD has just performed a slam dunk, and they know it...

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To quote AMD's SVP of its Enterprise division, Forrest Norrod: 

"We designed this part to compete with Ice Lake, expecting to make some headway on single threaded performance. We did not expect to be facing re-warmed Skylake instead. This is going to be one of the highlights of our careers"

 

 

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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 TB of RAM in your dual socket server? The discount in favor of AMD just became 50%. 

 

Source:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14694/amd-rome-epyc-2nd-gen/15

 

 

ServeTheHome has a great review up (https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7002-series-rome-delivers-a-knockout/) - just to put in some perspective as to how much of a shift this is...

 

FYI - 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable was released just over 4 months ago..

 

 

 

I'll be interested to see how long it will be before this affects Intel's business. At the moment, there's very little reason to buy an Intel Xeon processor, particularly with large cloud platforms such as GCP and Azure, along with vendors such as Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Cisco and Supermicro on board.

There's a lot more incentive for providers to explore EPYC than there was a day ago.

[S w a t s o n]

27 minutes ago, muskie said:

Interestingly both Azure and GCP have announced they'll be offering services based on Rome - wondering if/when AWS will follow suit

Already a thing. https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/11/introducing_amazon_ec2_instances_featuring_amd_epyc_processors/

 

AMD literally supplies every major US hyperscaler now.

[Doobeedoo]

They ensured that market with their roadmap and chips indeed. 

[Taf the Ghost]

6 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Already a thing. https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/11/introducing_amazon_ec2_instances_featuring_amd_epyc_processors/

 

AMD literally supplies every major US hyperscaler now.

Q4 Server Market share could get really wild.

[tech.guru]

Those cpu are awesome for virtual desktops imagine running 250 users from a single server.

 

This will drive down costs of vdi dramatically 

[James300]

29 minutes ago, tech.guru said:

Those cpu are awesome for virtual desktops imagine running 250 users from a single server.

 

This will drive down costs of vdi dramatically 

250 video editors, 1CPU anyone?

[The Benjamins]

8 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

so the drop-in compatibility: does it mean existing EPYC servers now run with PCIe 4 when using the new CPUs? o_o

and by drop in do they mean with out any BIOs update?

[The Benjamins]

In the Hexus review they got 31,000+ in C20 with 2 64c rome CPUs

 

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/133244-amd-epyc-7742-2p-rome-server/

 

 

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Oh, if you thought your PC was fast, the Daytona 2P system scores a whopping 31,179 marks in the multi-core Cinebench R20 test under Windows 10

 

[BuckGup]

It’s crazy to think CPUs have more cores then the Xeon Phis did. Phis are quad threaded though but still

[poochyena]

AMD's share price had a huge 15% jump today due to the announcement.

[S w a t s o n]

8 minutes ago, poochyena said:

AMD's share price had a huge 15% jump today due to the announcement.

Yes, I was quite pleased indeed.

 

Hopefully they can keep the momentum going once ice lake xeons actually exist

[cj09beira]

12 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

so the drop-in compatibility: does it mean existing EPYC servers now run with PCIe 4 when using the new CPUs? o_o

don't expect that to be the case, pcie 4 is already difficult for older boards with a single slot close to the cpu now imagine 4 times the lanes with more than double the distance 

 

12 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

so the drop-in compatibility: does it mean existing EPYC servers now run with PCIe 4 when using the new CPUs? o_o

servers should be no different than consumer systems a bios update would be required 

[tech.guru]

pcie express 4.0 might be useful for telsa cards whenever nvidia decides to support it. not sure how close v100 are to saturating the current pcie standard.

 

compute cards might be close