AMD has completed the 4th generation of the Epyc portfolio with the announcement of the Epyc 8004 series. The new processors include an all-new SP6 socket, up to 64 Zen 4c cores, and a six-channel DDR5 memory subsystem and are targeted for the edge, cloud, and telco market segments.
AMD's Epyc 8004 series ‘Siena' CPUs are the first and only chips to use the SP6 platform, at least for now. Moreover, they come with four 16-core Zen 4c general-purpose chiplets and an I/O die. These processors feature between eight and 64 cores (with SMT) running at 2.0–3.10 GHz with a default TDP of 80W to 200W. However, the TDP can be configured for up to 225 W or reduced to 70 W. Additionally, the new AMD Epyc CPUs have 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes, up to 128 MB of L3 cache, and a six-channel memory subsystem supporting up to 1.152 TB of DDR5-4800 RAM.
While AMD's Zen 4c cores are smaller and less power-demanding than full-fledged Zen 4 cores, they offer the same feature set and can therefore run applications that depend on instructions like AVX-512. Although AMD's Epyc 9004-series processors provide superior performance, AMD's Epyc 8004 series CPUs offer a lower TCO and improved power efficiency. In SPECpower_ssj 2008, AMD says that the ‘Siena' CPUs provide up to 2x more performance per watt than their rivals (Xeon Platinum 8490H and Xeon Platinum 8471N). In addition, according to AMD test findings, the Epyc 8324P has up to 1.16x greater performance per core in video encoding applications than Intel's 32-core Xeon 6421N. Another comparison made by AMD focusing on IoT Edge gateway applications is that an eight-core Epyc 8024P outperforms an eight-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8471N by roughly 80% in terms of SPECrate 2017_int_base throughput per 8kW rack.
AMD said its Epyc 8004 ‘Siena' CPUs are now available in new Dell (PowerEdge C6615), Lenovo (ThinkEdge SE455 V3), and Supermicro (H13 family of WIO Servers) edge servers. Ericsson and Microsoft (Azure) have also partnered with AMD for the launch of the new Epyc CPUs.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
KitGuru says: It's clear that the Epyc 8004 series won't be for the mainstream market. Still, considering their features, there's a good chance that some of the applications and services you use will be running on servers using these CPUs.