The AMD EPYC Embedded 3251 is a server/workstation processor with 8 cores, launched in February 2018. It is part of the EPYC Embedded lineup, using the Zen (Snowy Owl) architecture with BGA SP4r2. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 16 threads. EPYC Embedded 3251 has 16 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.5 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.1 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the EPYC Embedded 3251 on a 14 nm production process using 4,800 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. The multiplier is locked on EPYC Embedded 3251, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 55 W, the EPYC Embedded 3251 consumes typical power levels for a modern PC. AMD's processor supports DDR4 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2666 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, EPYC Embedded 3251 uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. Although neither the processor nor its chipsets support integrated graphics, certain motherboards include dedicated graphics chipset that can provide some basic display output functionality.
Hardware virtualization is available on the EPYC Embedded 3251, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.