AMD has unveiled a new monster CPU in its line of enterprise grade processors EPYC. The EPYC 7H12 was launched at an event in Rome, Italy this week. The 7H12 has a whopping 64 cores and 128 threads. It also has a 280W TDP (Thermal Design Power). With this much TDP, the processor can attain start at a base frequency of 2.6 GHz. And this can go up to a max boost frequency of 3.3 GHz. This makes the EPYC 7H12 the company’s best performing among its Rome product stacks.
AMD collaborated with Dell in actualizing the 7H12. The two companies held a joint press release on Wednesday. They announced five different Dell EMC PowerEdge servers powered by the new EPYC CPU. Forrest Norrod, who is the general manager and senior vice president of AMD’s Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group, spoke about the collaboration:
“AMD and Dell Technologies have a long-standing history of providing customers with high performance data solutions. The breakthrough design of the new Dell EMC PowerEdge systems continues that collaboration and takes full advantage of the AMD Infinity Architecture and leading security features of AMD EPYC to deliver exceptional performance and TCO to our customers.”
AMD has already been chipping away at Intel’s consumer CPU business. The company launched its successful Ryzen 3000 line of processors earlier this year. And with the launch of this second generation of many-core server processors, it is looking to challenge Intel’s Xeon range of enterprise grade CPUs.
Dell’s Side
Dell Technologies’ president and general manager of Server and Infrastructure Systems, Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, also shared her company’s side during the press release:
“The modern data center must embrace traditional and multi-cloud approaches, helping organizations become more agile, deliver new insights from data, and ultimately achieve results faster. The all-new Dell EMC PowerEdge servers maximize the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor performance to address these needs.”
Dell EMC has already set a new TPCX-V world record with its PowerEdge R7515. The R7515 boasts a 280% improvement in performance over the previous-generation of EPYC servers. AMD’s collaboration with Dell EMC serves both companies. EPYC offers a lot more cores than Xeon in both the ultra-dense single-socket and dual-socket form factors.
The New Heavyweight Champion?
EPYC uses the 7nm process in its chips. This already which gives it a huge density advantage over Intels’ Xeon Processors which use the 14nm process. This also gives EPYC more power efficiency, more cache and higher clock speeds. And you can add to all this, AMD’s more affordable pricing. The 7H12 could easily be the new heavyweight champion in the world of enterprise grade processors.
Dell EMC recently announced its full lineup of enterprise-grade servers in both ultra-dense single-socket servers, which is a considerable focal point for AMD because its servers offer far more cores than Intel’s Xeons in this form factor, and dual-socket models. Dell EMC also used its PowerEdge R7515 to set a new TPCX-V world record, notching a 280% performance improvement over its previous-generation EPYC server.
The Bullsequana XH2000
During the event, french company ATOS also revealed its new hybrid supercomputer, the Bullsequana XH2000. This supercomputer has been designed specifically for new exascale-class supercomputers that support the EPYC 7H12. The Bullsequana XH2000 has been specifically designed to provide advanced water cooling solutions for the 31 1U blades that the 7H12 packs per rack. It can provide up to 4.2 teraflops of processing power per chip. This makes the 7H12 almost 11% faster that AMD’s current top-of-the-stack CPU, the EPYC 7742.
