Wednesday, July 12th 2017

Intel Says AMD EPYC Processors "Glued-together" in Official Slide Deck

So, yes, Intel, I think the AMD engineers who have developed the Zen architecture from the ground-up would take issue with that. Especially when AMD's "Glued-together" dies actually wipe the proverbial floor with the blue company's chips in power-performance ratios, and deliver much better multi-threaded performance than Intel's offerings. Not bad for a "Glued-together" solution, I'd say.

Our resident W1zzard had this to say regarding AMD's latest CPUs: "The SenseMi power-management system seems to be working well in idle, with the 8-core machine drawing the same amount of power as Intel's quad-core "Kaby Lake" machine." And "At stock speeds, the energy-efficiency of Ryzen is truly phenomenal. Prime95 loads all cores and threads on the chip, and the Ryzen ends up with as much power draw as the quad-core Intel i7-7700K. The high power draw result of the overclocked chip is due to the increased voltage needed to achieve stable operation." And let's not forget this: This is epic. We're assuming you've sifted through our game-test results before seeing this page, and so you'll find that the gaming power draw of the 8-core Ryzen makes Intel's quad-core i7-7700K look bad. Power draw is as much as 30W lesser! Ryzen is hands down the most energy-efficient performance CPU AMD ever made, and easily outclasses Intel's 14 nm "leadership." Good show."
On SMT implementation between AMD's SMT and Intel's HT, Intel is basically comparing a $2,200 8-core Xeon to AMD's usually $499 Ryzen 7 1800X. They are correct in terms of core parity there, at least, but I think it goes more against Intel's customer fleecing in core/price ratios than anything else. And it's certainly a coincidence that for Intel to achieve these SMT implementation scaling numbers, which paints them in good light, they had to down-clock the Ryzen 1800X to 2.2 GHz. So, yes. Even though independent review sites have put AMD's EPYC 7601 SMT-powered improvement in various workloads at a 24% average improvement, and Intel's Xeon 8176 falls short of that at 19.58% (even rounding AMD's score down and Intel's up, that's still how big the gap is.)
Here, Intel is comparing their server-grade processors with AMD's Ryzen, desktop processors gaming woes, which really, is one of the best examples of comparing apples to oranges that I've seen in a long time. So AMD's server platform will require optimizations as well because Ryzen did, for incomparably different workloads? History does inform the future, but not to the extent that Intel is putting it here to, certainly. Putting things in the same perspective, is Intel saying that their Xeon ecosystem sees gaming-specific optimizations?
Ah, the "Glued-together" dies. Let's forget how AMD's Zen cores actually look like they were architected from the get-go for modularity and scaling, which has allowed the company to keep die-sizes to a minimum and yields to a maximum. This means that from a same-sized wafer, AMD can make more Ryzen/EPYC processors (because yes, that's the beauty of it, they're almost interchangeable), and in all likelihood, have more of those full-fledged dies without any defects that affect yields.

This is one of the reasons why AMD is able to offer an unlocked, true 8-core, 16-thread CPU in the Ryzen 7 1700 at less than Intel's 4-core, 8-thread i7 7700K (which consumes more power) - but also because AMD is democratizing access to cores while Intel maximized profits at the consumer's cost for almost a decade. And Infinity Fabric, which AMD also has implemented in their Vega architecture and will probably be used for the company's Zen-based APUs and next-gen Navi graphics architecture, is only glue. Intel would certainly like to be so lucky, since AMD's Infinity Fabric actually delivers more bandwidth than their UPI (Ultra Path Interconnect.)
Here, Intel are telling us how much better for the customer it is to be hard-locked to Intel's ecosystem for virtualization, since "VMs running on Intel Xeon processor compute pools can only live migrate to other Intel VM Pools". It's like they're saying "just imagine the amount of work you'll have to migrate these to AMD. Better remain with us."

Update: As some users pointed out, I used Ryzen 7 1800X power consumption figures as an example, instead of EPYC (those pictures are right here now.)
However, I consider that Intel themselves opened that door when they compared their Xeon, $2,200 offering with AMD's sub $499 Ryzen 7 1800X, which isn't a server CPU (and they down-clocked it to boot, let's not forget that.) That said, for comparison and fairness purposes, I'll just leave these here, courtesy of Anandtech, comparing dual Xeon systems (E5-2699 and the new Xeon 8176) with a dual EPYC 7601 system:

Performance in POV-Ray:
And maximum power consumption on the same application:
So essentially, AMD has 8 more cores, 16 more threads, delivers 16% more performance than Intel's e5-2699 system and 32% more performance than Intel's "non glued-together" Xeon 8176. AMD's chip does all that while consuming 23% less power than the Xeon e5-2699, and 28% less than the Xeon 8176. Not too shabby. I'll take my CPUs with this kind of glue any day.

Check the full press slides in the source. There's an interesting read there, even if there are those chuckle-worthy Intel comments that look like grappling at straws when real arguments are absent. But hey, that's this editor's interpretation. I reserve myself the right to be wrong, and to be slightly emotional at these underhanded tactics. It's just plain disrespectful for a company which stands on its engineers' shoulders to deride another's with no compelling argument.
Sources: Computerbase.de, Reddit, AnandTech SMT Integer Performance
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159 Comments on Intel Says AMD EPYC Processors "Glued-together" in Official Slide Deck

#76
5DVX0130
Meh, nothing new from Intel.
It’s been a while since they stooped so low though, but then again, it's been a while since AMD was relevant.

Luckily this time around, nobody is eating the deliciously creamy BS, that Intel is trying to shovel on everyone’s racks. AMD has already so many partners for EPYC it’s no wonder Intel is shitting itself. :roll:
Posted on Reply
#77
hathoward
john_I think most people behind systems using Xeon processors, hopefully Epyc also in the near future, know much more than us about processors and stuff. Much much more.
You would be surprised. Most senior leadership roles are filled by those who scaled middle management hell. By the time they are making executive decisions on this type of shit their only hope is listening to their direct reports. Who as well probably don't look at most data behind power point presentations. So yes, this type of tactic is very effective against uninformed leaders (most of them all are).
Posted on Reply
#78
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
Intel used MCM then, so what. This is part of reason I haven't used intel since p4 days, childish bs.

They are just trying to stirrup FUD
Posted on Reply
#79
phanbuey
hathowardYou would be surprised. Most senior leadership roles are filled by those who scaled middle management hell. By the time they are making executive decisions on this type of shit their only hope is listening to their direct reports. Who as well probably don't look at most data behind power point presentations. So yes, this type of tactic is very effective against uninformed leaders (most of them all are).
Exactly. Nobody ever got fired for buying intel...

That being said, alot of those types of CIOs are turning to the cloud companies or contractors like DELL proserv to avoid the cost and headache of running everything in house/ making decisions for themselves, and those are usually pretty nimble (first to adopt SSD's, regular replacement cycles etc.)
Posted on Reply
#80
Konceptz
the54thvoidTaking everything technical out of this discussion, from a marketing (internal) point of view there is a fundamental truth to the comments here.
In marketing, you never deride the competition unless you believe they are a threat. It's that simple. Or, if you're the underdog, trying to prove your worth. Industry leaders do not NEED to prove their worth. So whether or not Intel's point is valid isn't that relevant. It's that they feel the need to 'reassure' their base that Intel is still superior.
BINGO!
Posted on Reply
#81
The Stein
Hey, that sounds like the Pentium D!

Or the Core2 Quad series.

Doesn't help Intel is talking deal even though throughout this year they've made an asston of terrible decisions.
Posted on Reply
#82
Aquinus
Resident Wat-man
the54thvoidTaking everything technical out of this discussion, from a marketing (internal) point of view there is a fundamental truth to the comments here.
In marketing, you never deride the competition unless you believe they are a threat. It's that simple. Or, if you're the underdog, trying to prove your worth. Industry leaders do not NEED to prove their worth. So whether or not Intel's point is valid isn't that relevant. It's that they feel the need to 'reassure' their base that Intel is still superior.
They wouldn't need to reassure their base if they didn't consider what AMD has been doing to be a threat though. Intel is just downplaying it and it's not going to destroy Intel but, Intel is in this position where they have the most to lose. The question is, how much? This is preemptive damage control.
Posted on Reply
#83
GC_PaNzerFIN
On die mesh is better for low latency. Intel is right about that and they are playing with that because it is the only advantage they have now. There are many applications in which EPYC can provide great performance, even better than Intel, for half the price. But latency critical real time cloud backend tasks run best on the Skylake-EP, there is no denying that.

There is room for both AMD and Intel in the data center of tomorrow. Depends, what you want to do. :)
Posted on Reply
#84
Vya Domus
GC_PaNzerFINBut latency critical real time cloud backend tasks run best on the Skylake-EP, there is no denying that.
Or you could code in a smart way and avoid that , not much of an advantage after all. As I understand there should be more or less the same latency core-to-core to any of the CCX modules from any of the 4 dies. Therefore whatever method you find for reducing latency should be scalable.
Posted on Reply
#85
Jordan M Eilbert
Glued together? So much unlike the lid of the i9 CPUs then with their massive thermal leak due to your choice to cheap out on crappy thermal compound between core and lid?
Posted on Reply
#86
GC_PaNzerFIN
Vya DomusOr you could code in a smart way and avoid that , not much of an advantage after all.
There are things that are really really hard to code better, and very sensitive to hardware latency. Minimum time to serve a web client from data base for example is one of them.

www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/18

That is one example of such an oddball latency critical use cases.

Always, when you need to go outside of the die in MCM, you will get latency disadvantage.
Posted on Reply
#87
natr0n
Intel needs a laxative. They are so full of shit.
Posted on Reply
#88
R0H1T
GC_PaNzerFINThere are things that are really really hard to code better, and very sensitive to hardware latency. Minimum time to serve a web client from data base for example is one of them.

www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/18

That is one example of such an oddball latency critical use cases.

Always, when you need to go outside of the die in MCM, you will get latency disadvantage.
You do realize that this is the worst case scenario for AMD, like the torture tests for i9 showing how bad thermals can get?
As expected, the EPYC 7601 can not deliver high database performance out of the box. A small database that can be mostly cached in the L3-cache is the worst case scenario for EPYC. That said, there are quite a few tuning opportunities on EPYC. According to AMD, if you enable Memory Interleaving, performance should rise a bit (+10-15%?). Unfortunately, a few days before our deadline our connection to the BMC failed, so we could not try it out. In a later article, we will go deeper into specific tuning for both platforms and test additional database systems.

Typically when high response times were reported, this indicated low single threaded performance. However for EPYC this is not the case. We tested with a database that is quite a bit larger than the 8 MB L3-cache, and the high response time is probably a result of the L3-cache latency.
Posted on Reply
#89
Jism
Mweh. AMD was the first with the X2 processor that would actually put 2 dies together. Intel follows up with a CPU that glues 2 dies together simular as Epyc / Ryzen is or was.

The main goal was to cut / save costs from AMD, put more smaller cores together, link them with a high bandwidth bus and they succeeded. Now intel is whining about a glued design that actually does a pretty good job in COMPETING for a much better price.
Posted on Reply
#90
GC_PaNzerFIN
R0H1TYou do realize that this is the worst case scenario for AMD, like the torture tests for i9 showing how bad thermals can get?
Your quote says "We tested with a database that is quite a bit larger than the 8 MB L3-cache, and the high response time is probably a result of the L3-cache latency."
This is not the worst case scenario, unless you claim most data bases are smaller than that.

EPYC is not best for all use cases, nor do AMD claim so. Get over it.
Posted on Reply
#91
TheGuruStud
The salty tears from intel are so satisfying. I wonder how many are going to quit after getting yelled at by execs for failing the company LOL. It must be getting pretty hostile over there.
Posted on Reply
#92
Bansaku
The last time I upgraded with Intel was back in 2012, like the vast majority of us. Sorry Intel, AMD is leading the charge this round! Say what you will about glued together CPUs; They are kicking your ass!!
Posted on Reply
#93
TheoneandonlyMrK
Why focus on the bullshit of a pr piece.

The details were far more comedy worthy with other sites focusing on the stuff that matters , like

Intel's new 28C/56T CPU costs $8719, uses 670W of power Intel's new beast of a CPU uses up to 670W, which is insanity

Thats tweaktowns take on it

Be very interesting this battle as id imagine Amds Epyc won't get anywhere near that power use.

Or cost.

And its especially laughable when intel are stating customers have to stay with Intel for Vm support.
Posted on Reply
#94
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
theoneandonlymrkWhy focus on the bullshit of a pr piece.

The details were far more comedy worthy with other sites focusing on the stuff that matters , like

Intel's new 28C/56T CPU costs $8719, uses 670W of power Intel's new beast of a CPU uses up to 670W, which is insanity

Thats tweaktowns take on it

Be very interesting this battle as id imagine Amds Epyc won't get anywhere near that power use.

Or cost.

And its especially laughable when intel are stating customers have to stay with Intel for Vm support.
THE WHOLE SYSTEM USES 670W NOT THE CPU. God bless read the reviews. Tweaktown and their clickbait misinformation at ads needs to fix its garbage. They are worse than CNN.
Posted on Reply
#95
TheoneandonlyMrK
cdawallTHE WHOLE SYSTEM USES 670W NOT THE CPU. God bless read the reviews. Tweaktown and their clickbait misinformation at ads needs to fix its garbage. They are worse than CNN.
I do hope you're right , and believe so , I was so taken back by it i couldn't think through the nonsense.
Posted on Reply
#96
Vya Domus
cdawallTHE WHOLE SYSTEM USES 670W NOT THE CPU.
That's still a lot.
Posted on Reply
#97
cdawall
where the hell are my stars
theoneandonlymrkI do hope you're right , and believe so , I was so taken back by it i couldn't think through the nonsense.
I am I actually read the original toms hardware review that was stolen from.
Vya DomusThat's still a lot.
That isn't a lot for a server...
Posted on Reply
#98
justimber
Intel does really know how to use glue to call AMD for using it. lol
Posted on Reply
#99
Rahmat Sofyan
this guy, has really good opinion.. deleted for some reason, but somebody already ss it..


overall, as a customer can not more really happy how great the competition today.


But, seriously.. "glued" ? , so ridicoulus.. can intel proofing it ?
Posted on Reply
#100
Melvis
Be interesting to see if AMD responds to this.
Posted on Reply
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