AMD Releases EPYC 7003 Server Processors with 64 Cores and Higher Clock Speeds

AMD has officially unveiled its third-generation EPYC server processors. The CPUs use Zen 3 cores and some have higher clock speeds than their predecessors. As with the second generation, there are EPYC processors with 64 cores.

The lineup of AMD’s EPYC 7003 series consists of nineteen models. Below that are four F variants, which are optimized for a high clock speed. These all achieve a boost speed of 4GHz with a single core and there are variants with 8, 16, 24 and 32 cores. In addition, all these models feature the maximum amount of L3 cache of 256MB. This means that all these processors consist of eight chiplets, because there is 32MB of cache per chiplet.

The Zen 3 chiplets contain 8 cores each, for a total of up to 64 cores. On processors with fewer cores, parts of the chiplets are disabled. AMD can also use chips that contain production errors in this way. Like the 7002 generation EPYC processors, the new models are made at 7nm.

AMD positions the processors in three categories: Core Performance, Core Density and Balanced & Optimized. The F models belong to the former, with their high clock speed and a lot of cache per core. AMD places models with 48 to 64 cores in the second category and other variants with 16 to 32 cores fall into the third category. This ‘balanced’ category is aimed at an optimal balance between performance and costs.

The new top model with 64 cores, the EPYC 7763, is about 17 percent faster than its predecessor in high performance computing workloads, according to AMD; the 7H12 with the same number of cores. AMD also compares the chip with Intel’s Xeon Gold 6258R and compared to those server processors with 28 cores, AMD’s latest processor is 106 percent faster. AMD bases these numbers on the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark. The Xeon AMD compares to is Intel’s fastest processor from last year’s Cascade Lake lineup.

The EPYC 7003 series consists of the processors previously known under the code name Milan. They are based on the Zen 3 architecture and thus benefit from the same advantages as AMD’s Ryzen 5000 desktop processors. The new EPYC processors achieve higher clock speeds than their predecessors, but also score better per clock tick. According to AMD, the Zen 3 cores deliver an IPC gain of 19 percent.

The maximum number of cores is unchanged at 64 and the maximum amount of L3 cache is also the same at 256MB. However, the new EPYC processors can address up to 32MB L3 cache per core due to the renewed structure of the chiplets, compared to 16MB per core in the second generation. Furthermore, the new generation has more integrated security features.

The processors support PCIe 4.0 and all have 128 lanes at their disposal. With eight DDR4-3200 memory channels, there is support for up to 4TB of RAM per socket. Dimms of 256GB must be used for this. All EPYC processors support ECC memory.

EPYC 7003 processors are compatible with EPYC 7002 series server platforms, but BIOS updates are required to use the new processors in old motherboards. As with the previous generation, AMD also makes a number of P models, which can only be used in single-socket systems. The other processors are also suitable for two-socket server motherboards.

Numerous manufacturers are releasing server hardware with or for the new processors, including ASRock, ASUS, Cisco, Dell, Foxconn, Gigabyte, HPE, MSI, Lenovo, and Tyan. Major cloud providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, make instances available with the EPYC 7003 processors.