Final month AMD launched the EPYC 8004 “Siena” 4th Gen EPYC processors to spherical out their Zen 4 server processors with the expansive Genoa, Genoa-X, Bergamo, and Siena product portfolios. The brand new EPYC 8004 sequence are designed to maximise the ability effectivity for server deployments from the info heart to edge, teclo, and different non-traditional server environments. Up for testing as we speak is an preliminary have a look at the Siena efficiency within the type of the EPYC 8324P and EPYC 8324PN 32-core components for seeing how they stack up towards 32-core Intel Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” efficiency.
As a reminder in regards to the EPYC 8004 sequence line-up, the Siena processors vary from 8 to 64 core SKUs, Siena is designed to be solely a single socket platform, and Zen 4C cores are employed for larger power effectivity and maximizing CPU density. There’s additionally solely six reminiscence channels with Siena in comparison with 12 channels with Bergamo / Genoa(X) in addition to a discount within the variety of PCIe / CXL lanes.
The 32 core components this technology are the EPYC 8324P and 8324PN, with the latter being their “PN” variant that’s for Community Gear Constructing System (NEBS) compliant deployments that may face up to a larger working temperature vary of -5 to 85 C in comparison with 0 to 75 C for the P components. The EPYC 8324P has a 2.65GHz base frequency and three.0GHz enhance in comparison with the EPYC 8324PN having a 3.0GHz enhance too however a 2.05GHz base frequency. The EPYC 8324P has a 180 Watt TDP whereas the EPYC 8324PN has a 130 Watt TDP. The EPYC 8324P has a configurable TDP from 155 to 225 Watts whereas the Siena PN components wouldn’t have a configurable TDP.
Siena, Milan, and Genoa. Socket SP6 for Siena appears to be like similar to Socket SP3 with Milan and prior EPYC processors whereas being a lot smaller than the brand new Socket SP5 launched by Genoa.
The 1KU pricing on the EPYC 8324P is $1895 USD whereas the 8324PN pricing is $2125 USD. The pricing is sort of aggressive with the Intel Xeon Gold 6421N 32-core processor having a listing worth of $2368 USD though the most cost effective in-stock worth I used to be capable of finding was $2520 and at some retailers sells north of $3,000. The Xeon Gold 6421N is the primary comparability level for as we speak’s benchmarking with this 32-core Sapphire Rapids processor having a 185 Watt TDP, 1.8GHz base frequency, and three.6GHz turbo frequency.
The AMD EPYC 8324P/8324PN testing occurred with AMD’s Cinnabar reference server for Siena. Testing occurred with 8 x 32GB DDR5-4800 reminiscence and 4 3.2TB Micron 7450 Max NVMe SSDs in RAID10 with EXT4 because the storage throughout the benchmarking. The Intel Xeon Gold 6421N was equally configured in a single socket ASRockRack SPC741D8-2L2T/BCM server with 4 Micron 7450 Max NVMe SSDs. The Xeon testing passed off each with six reminiscence channels to match the Siena capabilities after which at eight reminiscence channels for the complete potential of the processor.
All the benchmarking occurred with Ubuntu 23.10 to characterize a modern Linux setting with the Linux 6.5 kernel and GCC 13.2 compiler for having a contemporary software program stack for all of this EPYC and Xeon servr benchmarking. In whole the next processor configurations have been examined for this evaluate:
EPYC 8324P: The AMD EPYC 8324P in its default configuration / energy state (efficiency determinism) / default 180 Watt TDP.
EPYC 8324P – Energy: The EPYC 8324P in its default configuration except for switching over to the ability determinism mode.
EPYC 8324P – 155W: The AMD EPYC 8324P when dropped to the bottom configurable TDP worth of 155 Watts.
EPYC 8324PN: The NEBS 32-core mannequin, the EPYC 8324P in its default configuration of 130 Watts.
EPYC 8324PN – Energy: Operating the EPYC 8324PN within the energy determinism mode.
Xeon Gold 6421N: The Intel Xeon Gold 6421N Sapphire Rapids 32-core processor in its default configuration and all eight reminiscence channels populated.
Xeon Gold 6421N – 6c RAM: Operating the Intel Xeon Gold 6421N with simply six of the eight reminiscence channels populated to match the reminiscence channels utilized by AMD EPYC Siena.
From there I fired off dozens of benchmarks for this preliminary have a look at AMD EPYC Siena efficiency underneath Linux. Throughout testing there was performance-per-Watt and CPU energy consumption monitored through the RAPL/PowerCap interfaces.
Efficiency-per-dollar metrics have been additionally calculated primarily based on present Intel and AMD CPU pricing. Moreover, on condition that we’re evaluating variety of reminiscence configurations, the DIMMs have been included as a part of the fee. A $150 per DIMM foundation was used for the going fee on the used 32GB Samsung M321R4GA0BB0-CQKMG DDR5 reminiscence modules in each the 6 channel and eight channel configurations on every server.
