Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

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No clear difference beyond the scaling to 6x the memory channels, 24x the memory capacity, 12x the core count, 6x the PCIe lanes, and ability to double (or nearly double) these with a 2nd socket. There are also a few features, like per VM memory encryption, which have only ever been on Epyc (and "real" Epyc, not just any Epyc branded consumer platforms).

Like the article hits spot on right at the start, it has nothing to do with needing to differentiate Epyc somehow and everything to with differentiating the PRO versions of the consumer CPUs:

> was suddenly no longer available on AMD CPUs outside the company's Pro lineup

The PRO variants are just the standard consumer CPU sold at a $ premium for enterprise targets. They have remote management firmware enabled, get longer firmware and support lifecycles, FIPS certification, and, now, memory encryption over the consumer branded version of the same CPU.

What’s the different between these two:

Consumer:

https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/90...

EPYC variant:

https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/server/epyc/4005-...

The Epyc 4585PX falls into the `(and "real" Epyc, not just any Epyc branded consumer platforms)` note. I.e. it is the same CPU as the AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 9965X3D, branded differently because it is certified against "server" branded motherboards instead of "standard" PC motherboards (same socket/chipset though, outside firmware validation the two are swappable). It carries none of the actual Epyc feature sets, just the PRO features, and the feature differences are therefore the same as any other PRO CPU.

Hence why I said in my original post:

>>Makes sense. The ECC in consumer line is what created an entire market for use in inexpensive web hosting. Then AMD created their EPYC variants, and it wasn’t clear what the difference was between the consumer & Epyc models. reply

To summarize my responses to what you had originally posted:

"True" Epyc has always had a differentiation from the consumer line in the scaling+features, Ryzen PRO has always had a differentiation from the consumer line in the features, and "fake" Epyc 4000 has always had differentiation from the consumer line in the same way as PRO had/has.

Of all of the combinations, only the newer Epyc 4000 line compared with the pre-existing Ryzen PRO line have actually lacked differentiation from each other and this change in encryption support on the consumer line does not help with that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com