New AMD EPYC-based Compute Engine family, now in beta

What are the implications? Higher perf and/or lower price?

Looks to be about $5/Month cheaper, based on this page:

https://cloud.google.com/compute/all-pricing#n2_machine_type...

Jeez, I didn't realize how expensive cloud compute was. I always wondered why my school still has a datacenter. Having your own servers still makes sense for a lot of orgs.

Basically. This is the best server processor.

Big claim there. On what basis?

You can pick almost any basis you like, it's still winning.

Most performance, most performance per watt, most performance per cost. Also, more performance per thread than high-threadcount intel chips. (Although, some of their low-threadcount Xeons do have an edge on that one.)

Oh, and best memory interface and best IO, too.

It's also expensive to get data out of cloud too. Getting data in is easy but getting it out will cost you.

This article goes into great detail: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7002-series-rome-deliv...

Another follow-up article: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7702p-review-redefinin...

AMD is offering incredible performance on every metric: single threaded, multithreaded, total RAM per socket, PCIe 4.0, power consumption, total performance, total price, performance for price, etc.

Outside of some very niche applications, the only reason someone would choose Intel for servers right now is because "no one ever got fired for choosing Intel."

AMD's Epyc Rome processors are truly excellent, best-in-class processors.

There are literally no server benchmarks anywhere in those articles. Unless you are planning to run a distributed C build node there's nothing in these articles that can inform your choice. Distributed building is an extremely narrow, niche use case. Where are the nginx and mysql and grpc benchmarks?

Raw single-thread perf still matters for many workloads. Epyc doesn't come in especially high clock / fewer core configurations that are beneficial to some workloads. (Additionally: cloud vendors don't buy that end of configuration; they buy the high core count, high perf per watt configurations. E.g. GCE's N2D is the 2.25 GHz base clock, 64 core Epyc 7742 in a 2P configuration, but you can get EPYC 7302 with 16 cores at a 3 GHz base clock.)

For my business' workloads, Threadripper 3 (same gen 2 Zen, same IO chiplet, etc) would likely be a much better fit (and competitive with Intel) if AMD sold it with the same kind of enterprisey guarantees they do for Epyc (ECC, etc). Threadripper 3970x, for example, comes with 32 cores and a base clock of 3.7 GHz. That's a much better fit for us than Epyc 7742 or 7302.

There's absolutely no way you could've read those articles in the last four minutes. They go into great detail about what makes the Rome processors so important -- it's not just some random amalgamation of benchmarks, but the benchmarks serve to provide hard numbers that back up the textual analysis.

The benchmarks are not just "distributed compilation" either... that's a very misleading characterization. There was one compilation benchmark for the Linux kernel, and that's the only compilation benchmark I remember seeing.

No one benchmarks nginx because nginx can easily saturate the network card on a server without saturating the processor.

Here's a postgres benchmark: https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=2002066-VE-XEONEPYC...

Or a rocksdb benchmark: https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=2002066-VE-XEONEPYC...

MariaDB was a rare win for Intel: https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=2002066-VE-XEONEPYC...

("rare win" is literally the wording used in the Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux55-...)

ServeTheHome had access to more comprehensive Intel hardware, so I preferred to link to their articles, but Phoronix saw more of the same stuff.

Intel was thoroughly destroyed in every Linux review of Rome vs Intel's latest that I've seen. Intel can eke out some rare wins when applications are heavily optimized for the nuances of their CPUs, but it's not guaranteed even then.

If you can't be bothered to read articles to understand the answer to the question you asked, then this is my last reply.

Every morning, I beg my God to make morons stop replying to me on HN. Today is the first day anyone has promised to make my dream come true.

I didn't read those articles in the last 4 minutes because I read them when they were published. A massively parallel run of 7zip was a really stupid benchmark in August and it remains stupid today.

These other benchmarks are certainly more relevant but none of them jumps out at me as a killer claim. An EPYC 7402 with 50% more cores, drawing 80% more power, and costing 35% more dollars than a Xeon Silver 4216 delivers 24% more pgsql ops per second. What TCO equation do you plug that into? I would describe these results as mixed.

It’s a question of how dynamic your usage is and how much the better security and management features save you. If you have very consistent workloads with little idle hardware and modest admin needs you can beat cloud environments even with reservations but usually when I see the numbers it means major costs like staffing or power / HVAC aren’t being factored in.

Calling someone a moron is not acceptable on HN, to start with, but it's also just not a great way to conduct a discussion. Secondly, you explained that you HAVE read the articles, so why would I stop replying to you?

> These other benchmarks are certainly more relevant but none of them jumps out at me as a killer claim. An EPYC 7402 with 50% more cores, drawing 80% more power, and costing 35% more dollars than a Xeon Silver 4216 delivers 24% more pgsql ops per second. What TCO equation do you plug that into? I would describe these results as mixed.

That's some interesting cherry picking. If I may do some of my own...

- The Epyc 7642 is doing 66% more pg sql ops per second than the Silver 4216, but only using an average of 34% more power than the 4216.

- The Xeon Platinum 8253 is consuming about the same amount of power as the Epyc 7402, costs twice as much, and yet the 7402 is performing 34% faster.

The Xeon Silver 4216 is competitive in this one benchmark, and you declare that the results are "mixed". It gets thoroughly destroyed in tons of other benchmarks.

So, yes, if you will only ever run this specific version of MariaDB on this one server, then it might be a toss up... IF you don't benefit from using PCIe 4.0 to access more (or faster) SSDs, and you don't want to have the option of putting in more RAM.

AMD is consistently better in the overwhelming majority of benchmarks here, especially as you get away from the low end. Saying that Intel has one "toss up" victory in the low end category is not exactly a ringing endorsement to pick Intel here.

> For my business' workloads, Threadripper 3 (same gen 2 Zen, same IO chiplet, etc) would likely be a much better fit (and competitive with Intel) if AMD sold it with the same kind of enterprisey guarantees they do for Epyc (ECC, etc).

Threadripper has official support for ECC. Well, "optional" based off of the motherboard's support: https://www.amd.com/en/chipsets/str40

And just picking a random board: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/TRX40-AORUS-XTREME-rev-... you'll see it listed:

"Support for ECC Un-buffered DIMM 1Rx8/2Rx8 memory modules"

That it must be un-buffered is an annoying market segmentation thing that limits your max RAM in practice, BUT you can at least get ECC up to 256GB with official support and RAM modules that actually exist.

AMD does sell Threadripper with the same enterprisey guarantees as they do for Epyc, at least in regards to ECC.

>Quad-Channel DDR4 ECC Memory Support >With the most memory channels you can get on desktop6, the Ryzen™ Threadripper™ processor can support Workstation Standard DDR4 ECC (Error Checking & Correction Mode) Memory to keep you tight, tuned and perfectly in sync.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/ryzen-threadripper

ECC is also supported in the desktop class CPUs and chipsets.

Please don't cross into personal attack. It breaks HN's rules and invites worse from others. Your comment would be fine without the last (and arguably also the first) bits.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't cross into personal attack or break the site guidelines even if someone else started it. That's how we get a downward spiral. Conversely, if you respond by not getting personal and sticking to the site guidelines, you contribute to preserving the commons.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yep, I'm familiar with all that.

Yeah, it's that "optional" part that is problematic for ECC in particular. But don't let that be a distraction; there are plenty of other enterprisey features in Epyc that are not present in TR, including registered memory support.

Re: 256GB ECC UDIMM on an 8-socket TR board, that's 32GB a DIMM. I guess you can find 32 GB ECC UDIMMs now, but that's pretty recent and expensive.

ECC isn't the only feature, please don't focus on that at the expense of missing the point. They do some market segmentation between TR and Epyc and it is material.

> But don't let that be a distraction; there are plenty of other enterprisey features in Epyc that are not present in TR, including registered memory support.

Then don't make your example be ECC specifically. It's the only thing you listed, I wasn't "distracted" by it. And I also even commented on the lack of registered memory support, so I don't know why you're repeating that back to me?