Posted on 06/25/2017 12:06:51 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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With the launch of AMD EPYC we can finally go into detail about the AMD architecture codenamed “Naples.” CPU design is extremely dense. The vast majority of people who use and purchase servers have very little need to know exactly how each architecture works. Likewise, those who use servers often just want to know will it work out of the box or will it be painful requiring hand compiling every bit of code at every turn.
When we set out to do the AMD EPYC architecture piece as part of our launch content series, we realized that there are very few folks who can follow (or frankly care) about the intricacies of architecture. Still, the server market has largely been in a single architecture world for 5+ years after the Intel Xeon E5 series was first launched in Q1 2012. With AMD EPYC there is now an alternative in the market that will run virtually every piece of software out of the box. At the same time, it is a fairly radical design departure from what Intel offers in its generational cadence so we wanted to present an architectural overview for those who did not specialize in computer engineering or electrical engineering.
In this piece, we are going to focus on the cores and interconnects. We have another piece on the platform-level features of the AMD EPYC 7000 series. Both aspects have a significant impact on the value and having hands-on experience with EPYC in the data center we have unique insights we can share.
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For the Technicals and Graphs:
Introducing AMD EPYC 7000 Series ZEN Architecture
AMD Ryzen Die Shot
That gives each die up to 8 cores and 16 threads with 4MB L2 cache and 16MB L3 cache. AMD then takes these (up to 8 core) building blocks and puts four onto a package. (Chip seen in above post)
Can I fry an egg on it? What percentage of software can take advantage of all the cores and threads?
The top side with the Heatspreader lid over the inards shown in the first photo.
For more detail on the various sku's and other details:
Early indications are that it runs cooler than the Intel XEON chips.
It can run a hypervisor and thus multiplied Virtual Machines.
Running a single game on it would be a total wast with maybe 4 of the cores busy....typically but there are some games out that do some multi-threading.
Doom with the Vulcan coding.
The FReepers own Folding@Home group can make full use of this hardware, running protein folding simulations to advance medical research.
Almost all AR and VR software makes use of it.
And the plethora of Wall Street computer trading systems that run Linux will run with few modifications.
Doom, as noted above, and Solitare, see much less improvement ... but the cards cascade down REALLY fast when you win!
Another strain of software that will take advantage is Multimedia Encoding. Video and Photo editing software is multi-threaded. All that motion picture software intensive activity could enjoy an uplift from this architecture.
This will not replace some GPU-compute functions though, so the benefit in multi-media might be slightly greater than insignificant.
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