Maximum PC - UK (2019-09)

the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small

MAXIMUMPC SEP 2019 maximumpc.com

quickstart

10

Zen 2 server chips meet every expectation

AMD’s Epic EPYC

that Intel’s top Xeon is $10,

or so, Rome is competitive as

well as fast; we expect nothing

less from AMD these days.

There’s still a fight ahead,

though. The Xeon has specific

advantages, such as cache

and memory latencies, which

help some applications that

need quick responses, such

as databases and analytics.

Intel has considerably more

resources, too—it actually has

more software engineers than

AMD has employees in total.

One reason why Rome looks

like such a serious contender

is that the chip it was designed

to go head to head with, Intel’s

Ice Lake Xeon, isn’t ready yet,

so it will debut against the

established Cascade range,

which still uses the Skylake

architecture on a 14nm

process. So, will AMD sell

them by the bucketload, and

capture the market? No. It’s

not that simple. There’s more

to capturing market share

than being competitive. AMD

hopes to reach a 10 percent

share of the server market by

2020, which looks likely. Dell,

for example, plans to triple

its AMD offerings. Depending

on which figures you use, the

company currently has about

5 percent. If things go well,

it could be looking at up to

15 percent within two years.

Quite a feat, given AMD started

practically from scratch with

its first-gen EPYC. AMD has

captured some trophies,

too, including supplying

Rome chips for what will be

the world’s most powerful

supercomputer, Frontier,

being built at the Oak Ridge

National Laboratory. Rome

will be another headache for

Intel, one with a financial edge.

Meanwhile, the Zen 2 Ryzen

3000 series has started to

reach paying customers—

and us, too. See what we

make of it on page 72. One

unexpected hitch has been

with the game Destiny 2, which

fails completely, hanging on

launch. This required the rapid

distribution of a BIOS fix to sort

out. Those hoping to overclock

their 3000s are going to be a

little disappointed; there’s not

much headroom on the first

batch. AMD likes to squeeze as

much as it can out of any given

chip, and sell it running at as

close to its maximum potential

as possible. Unlike Intel, which

has a habit of moving chips

about a bit to fill gaps in its

range. Ryzen 3000 sales have

been buoyant—Amazon’s best

sellers list puts the Ryzen 9

3900X at its head, and AMD

occupies seven of the top ten

slots. It’s not exactly a good

indicator of actual sales, given

how important corporate

buyers are, but it shows what

people go for when they have a

free choice.

Elsewhere, an internal

memo at Intel has been

leaked online, which makes

interesting reading. It gives

a potted history of the two

companies’ rivalry, and what

Intel can do to check AMD’s

resurgence. The author admits

that Intel hasn’t faced such

a challenge since the early

2000s. It’s clear the company

knows where it has failed, and

what to do to recover. Intel

is 10 times the size of AMD,

and dedicated to staying that

way. The good news is that

such competitiveness leads to

innovation—we haven’t seen

chip designs forge ahead like

this in years. –CL

FOLLOWING the launch of

AMD’s Zen 2 desktop chips, the

next step is Zen 2 server chips,

EPYC. Get this right, and there

are fortunes to be made, and

AMD looks to have got it right.

Its new EPYC 7002 series, code

name Rome, is due very soon,

and numerous details have

leaked out. The initial range

apparently runs to 19 variants,

from eight-core entry chips

at under $500, through to

64-core monsters, which pack

eight of AMD’s eight-core Zen

2 chiplets into one processor.

They all carry a decent amount

of L3 cache, from 32GB up to

a laudable 256GB. TDPs run

from a quite cool 120W to a

warm but not overly hot 225W.

We thought it was going

to be fast, now we know. An

unverified submission to the

SiSoft database of an EPYC

7702P, one step down from

the halo 7742, put it at the top

of the rankings. It looks as if

AMD’s demonstrations earlier

in the year, where a prototype

chip humbled a dual-chip

Xeon Platinum 8180M system,

weren’t all spin. Rome will be

priced keenly, for server chips:

The range tops out at under

$8,000, with the single-socket

64-core chip costing $4,900.

All unconfirmed as yet. Given

It looks as though AMD’s

earlier demonstrations of a

prototype weren’t all spin.

AMD’s second-

gen EPYC chips

are very strong—

and potentially

very lucrative.

©^

AM

D