With the launch of AMD’s Genoa CPU platform, the semiconductor company cemented its position as market leader in processor performance. Powered by its Zen 4 technology, the 4th gen of AMD EPYC officially launched as the 9004 series of CPU. In summary, we saw core counts of up to 96, 384MB of L3 cache and power draw saw these CPU’s go up to 360W TDP.
As promised on the AMD roadmap, the platform also included Genoa-X and Bergamo to arrive later than the initial launch. With Genoa-X, AMD add in 3D V-Cache for up to a whopping 1152MB per CPU. These are designed for the HPC market and applications that benefit from ultra-fast memory access.
Bergamo SKUs then arrived with three new CPUs, named the 97x4 series. These CPUs are offering even higher core counts and targeting cloud deployments that typically use ARM based servers with extreme core counts.
Tech Overview
Genoa-X
AMD’s Genoa-X is the codename for their 9x84X EPYC series. We see three specialised SKUs for this range of CPU’s. Covering a wide range of cores, namely 16, 32 and 96 core.
These CPU’s complement the original EPYC Genoa SKU’s by offering up to a huge 1152MB L3 cache. Designed for the HPC market; applications which require faster access to memory. Having this huge cache directly on the CPU die means faster access vs when an application otherwise would have to use standard RAM. And, of course, the cache memory being on the CPU die means it is much faster too.
We saw AMD introduce this technology with its Milan series (EPYC 7003), the CPU’s use a die stacking technology to mount memory on top of the CPU. There are tiny copper to copper interconnects to supply the bandwidth between the chiplets. A very clever technology that provides a huge performance boost in certain applications.
Bergamo
Moving on to Bergamo, AMD again introduce three new SKUs under the Bergamo platform and using the EPYC 97x4 naming convention:
As seen in the table above, cores counts surge past the general purpose 9004 SKUs, now topping out at 128 cores. There are two 128 core CPU’s SKU’s, one being the 9754S which is designed for single socket servers only. The 112 core 9734 completes the lineup. These CPUs allow for some extremely dense and powerful server hardware with AMD targeting cloud native deployments and taking on the extreme core count ARM CPU’s such as Ampere.
Remember, AMD EPYC CPUs are made up of CCD’s, which stand for Core Chiplet Dies. These chiplets in turn contain the CPU cores that make up the silicon. So, how does AMD manage to cram in more cores for this Bergamo update? Well, by introducing a Zen4c variant that reduces the L3 cache size by 50% from what topped out at the 384MB in the Genoa 9004 series, to 256MB in the new 97x4 Bergamo range. This frees up space, allowing for more cores into each CCD.
The new chip also has a smaller footprint than previously, as shown in the next slide. The rest of the silicone is similar, with the same capabilities as the rest of the AMD EPYC 9004 series. This means dual socket, the same number of memory channels and PCIe Gen 5 support.
AMD is touting the excellent performance gains in cloud native deployments; we will look at performance of these CPU’s closely at our Boston Labs facility in a future article.
Conclusion
The important thing to note about these new CPU SKU’s? They are socket compatible and using the same underlying technology. So are if you have a platform already supporting Genoa or are considering such servers, this allows you to choose from the general purpose Genoa CPU’s, the HPC focused Genoa-X, or the cloud native compute of Bergamo. This shows AMD is targeting different sectors for its CPU portfolio.
These CPUs are available for testing in our Boston Labs facility. Boston Labs is all about enabling our customers to make informed decisions in selecting the right hardware, software and overall solution for their specific challenges. If you’d like to request a test drive of the 4th Generation AMD EPYC Processors, including the Bergamo and Genoa-Z SKU’s, please get in touch by emailing [email protected] or call us on 01727 876100 and one of our experienced sales engineers will gladly guide you through building the perfect solution just for you.
Author
Sukhdip Mander
Field Application Engineer
Boston Limited