Since the announcement of AMD’s Zen 3 core microarchitecture, we expect three series of products to be announced: desktop Ryzen, mobile Ryzen and enterprise EPYC. So far, the desktop parts have now been introduced and are in retail (if you can find them), and the mobile Ryzen processors are part of AMD’s CES release this week for retail in February. That leaves only the Zen 3-based EPYC, which AMD decided to anticipate as part of its CES main offering today.
As for the design of Zen 3 EPYC ‘Milan’ processors, we expect an almost apparent transition from the previous Zen 2 EPYC ‘Rome’ ecosystem, with pin-compatible processors offering up to 64 cores and with 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes. For performance, if there is anything with the desktop processors, we should expect to see + 19% IPC gains as well. The question remains about frequencies and efficiency, and when the time comes for AMD to announce the product stack, we’ll see where the solution lies in terms of competition – should AMD have a significant competitive advantage, prices will undoubtedly rise as well. The previous generation EPYC 7742 had a ‘price’ of $ 6950 for comparison.
In today’s main presentation, dr. Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, demonstrated the weather forecast simulation code known as WRF, featuring two of the new 32-core Milan processors against Intel’s popular 28-core Xeon Gold 6258R (we reviewed this). The demo simulated a 6-hour weather pattern across the continental US, with a dual connection in Milan 46% faster than Intel. This was calculated based on the final framework cut away from the simulation in the main reason, which showed that Intel was 82% complete where Intel was 56% complete.
+ 68% for single socks, + 46% for double socks
AMD’s own benchmark then showed a + 68% difference when comparing a single socket solution. AMD did not provide exact details about the rest of the system used during the test. It should be clear that we can not validate the performance demands of AMD because it is a preview.
We expect more details on the Milan and AMD portfolio later this year. Sooner rather than later.