AMD launches its new fourth generation EPYC Genoa with up to 96 cores

AMD has presented today at its “together we advance_data centers” event the new AMD EPYC Genoa processors, processors that come with the Zen 4 architecture inside to provide enormous efficiency with chips of up to 96 coressomething that will make them unmatched for tasks with high parallelism.

Already at the packaging level we find that these processors are larger than the previous ones, and it is that with more than 6000 pins on its socket and a total of up to 12 CCDs under its IHSEPYC Genoa processors are larger than previous generation AMD EPYC processors.

Thanks to that, we find up to 96 cores and 192 threads on each chipsomething that allows increasing computing density in data centers, reducing by up to two thirds the space needed to have servers that are capable of giving the same performance as the Intel alternative, or in other words, Have 67 percent more compute density while consuming 54 percent less electricity.

Getting to the processors themselves, the EPYC Genoa processors will arrive with variants between 16 and 96 cores, thus counting on powers between 240w and 400w if we take into account the margins provided by the cTDP. In the table below these lines we can see the variety of chips that have been presented for this generation, but in general, all of them have a default TDP dangerously close to 300W.

It is to be hoped that, due to these releases, server manufacturers need to review their cooling solutionsalthough taking into account the socket change, it was something that would be more than expected, and at the end of the day, With lower consumption than the competition, it is reasonable to consider that AMD has done its job here.

AMD has also shown today a whole battery of performance results, which promise, for example 2.8 times more performance and 3.1 times more virtual machines supported per single server compared to the competition. Also, as we see below these lines, taking the third generation Intel Xeon Platinum as a reference, the new Genoa 96 cores get 2.4 times more performance in 3D rendering.

In general, we can see how several of the workloads in which the performance of these processors can be compared, performance is 2-3 times that of a dual-socket system with 40-core Intel Xeon processorsso the performance and efficiency advantage is quite clear.

We also find great news at the level of the specifications of the processors themselves, Starting with a 12-channel DDR5 controller capable of running 6TB of memory per processor, being possible to install two of these processors, and with it, enjoy 12TB of DDR5 RAM per server. Also, RAM can be allocated to separate nodes allowing for further optimization.

As expected, with the new DDR5 memory we also find a higher overall system performancesomething that can be seen in this slide related to the memory capacities of the EPYC Genoa processors.

At the level of the rest of the platform, some notable mentions are support for up to 160 PCI Express Gen 5 lanes, which can be negotiated up to x1 links on a branch basiswhile maintaining the 4 PCI Express Gen 3 links for the Infinity Fabric between processors, which are added to another 6 lines per processor that will be available to the system.

Another important point that comes with these processors is complete support for AVX-512, something that gives it up to 4.2 times more INT8 inference performance than what we could find in the previous generation of EPYC processors. Conveniently, there’s no comparison this time around with Intel, who has had more support for AVX-512 so far.

In short, AMD today introduced the most powerful data center processors on the market, although it is true that we have no point of comparison with the new Intel Xeon Max with Sapphire Rapids architecture, processors that will arrive in 2023.

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