AMD muscles in on Xeon’s turf as it unveils Epyc | Hacker News Reader

AMD muscles in on Xeon’s turf as it unveils Epyc

arstechnica.com

90 pointsrbanffy13 comments

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Pretty impressive specs.

My favorites:

* Cortex A-5 security/boot processor

* High throughput I/O (I always thought QPI was a great improvement over HT, seems like they've gone one further)

* 290GB/s memory controller (excellent for algorithms that need to span many many GB and can't fit into a GPU)

Clever bit, comparing against Bulldozer in places where they can't beat Xeon.

All in all, looks like the competition has truly heated up.

It's unfortunate that they have built in USB 3.0 controllers rather than 3.1, especially given that Thunderbolt wont be available with AMD based systems.

I hadn't been aware that Thunderbolt wouldn't be available on AMD systems... indeed my understanding was that Intel's release of Thunderbolt royalty-free open specs opened the path for inclusion by anybody. Was I wrong?

That spec opening was only announced a month ago. It's not going to be open until next year[0], far too late for inclusion into silicon that's probably being manufactured right now.

[0] "In addition to Intel’s Thunderbolt silicon, next year Intel plans to make the Thunderbolt protocol specification available to the industry under a nonexclusive, royalty-free license." https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/envision-world-thunder...

What is the use of USB ports on server hardware?

Not just server hardware. The single socket versions will be used for workstations. USB 3.1 would have allowed use of the new high-end external storage systems. Luckily USB 3.0 is still kind of fast.

Also, not all servers are set up to be controlled from some remote point. I bet some of these servers will need at least one USB port to install the OS in some smaller installations.

AMD likely started designing Epyc before USB 3.1 was standardized. I don't think that it will hold anything back, as 3.1 controllers/ports can be provided by the chipset instead.

No word on APUs, no word on HSA. Is HSA just dead?

The AM4 socket that accepts the new non-APU Ryzen chips has support for the eventual APUs that will be released. All AM4 motherboards have display options built-in AFAIK, Neweggs shows the majority have HDMI ports on board but some have DisplayPort. AMD will eventually release the APUs probably under the Ryzen 3 brand.

The promise of HSA was to make computation in both CPUs and APUs seamless. Nobody is even talking about it now.

Maybe it's far enough along now. Now one talks about SSE anymore, did it go away?

The discrete dies on Epyc all communicate with faster version of PCI-E(the Infinity Fabric), GPUs communicate with PCE-E, SSDs communicate with PCI-E.

AMD certainly hasn't given up on HSA: http://www.amd.com/system/files/2017-06/TIRIAS-AMD-Epyc-GPU-...

I can confirm: my AM4 motherboard has DisplayPort and HDMI connectors.

Between this, iMac GPU deal a few days ago, and mining crypto; I've went ahead and bought a ton of AMD shares.

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