AMD is in a constant process of processor development, and there are always new technologies on the horizon. Back in March of 2020, the company has revealed that it is working on new X3D packaging technology, that integrated both 2.5D and 3D approaches to packing semiconductor dies together as tightly as possible. Today, we are finally getting some more information about the X3D technology, as we have the first codename of the processor that is featuring this advanced packaging technology. According to David Schor, we have learned that AMD is working on a CPU that uses X3D tech with stacked dies, and it is called Milan-X.

The Milan-X CPU is AMD's upcoming product designed for data center usage. The rumors suggest that the CPU is designed for heavy bandwidth and presumably a lot of computing power. According to ExecutableFix, the CPU uses a Genesis-IO die to power the connectivity, which is an IO die from EPYC Zen 3 processors. While this solution is in the works, we don't know the exact launch date of the processor. However, we could hear more about it in AMD's virtual keynote at Computex 2021. For now, take this rumor with a grain of salt.

AMD processors have been very good at the field of security, on par with its main competitor, Intel. However, from time to time, researchers find new ways of exploiting a security layer and making it vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. Today, we have information that two new research papers are being published at this year's 15th IEEE Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT'21) happening on May 27th. Both papers are impacting AMD processor security, specifically, they show how AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) is compromised. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich and the University of Lübeck are going to present their papers on CVE-2020-12967 and CVE-2021-26311, respectfully.

While we do not know exact details of these vulnerabilities until papers are presented, we know exactly which processors are affected. As SEV is an enterprise feature, AMD's EPYC lineup is the main target of these two new exploits. AMD says that affected processors are all of the EPYC embedded CPUs and the first, second, and third generation of regular EPYC processors. For third-generation EPYC CPUs, AMD has provided mitigation in SEV-SNP, which can be enabled. For prior generations, the solution is to follow best security practices and try to avoid an exploit.

The AMD embedded roadmap for 2020 - 2023 was recently leaked and reveals some interesting information about AMD's upcoming Zen 4 based EPYC server processes. The current generation 7003 series of Zen 3 EPYC processors offer up to 64 cores and 128 threads with a TDP range of 120 W - 280 W. The next-generation EPYC 7004 "Genoa" Zen 4 processors will push the maximum core count to 96 cores and 192 threads with a maximum TDP of 320 W. The Zen 4 based EPYC processors will move to a 12 chiplet design up from the current 8 chiplet design which allows for the core increase that will increase the physical size of the processors and require a new SP5 socket. The new EPYC 7004 series processors will also support the latest features such as 12 channel DDR5-5200 ECC memory and PCIe Gen5.

AMD in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed that its wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries has been amended. Under the new terms, AMD places orders for wafers from GlobalFoundries up to 2024, with purchase targets set for each year leading up to 2024. Beyond meeting these targets, AMD is free from all other exclusivity commitments. The agreement was previously amended in January 2019, setting annual purchase targets for 2019, 2020, and 2021, while beginning a de-coupling between AMD and GlobalFoundries. This enabled the company to source 7 nm (or smaller) chips, such as CCDs and GPUs, from other foundries, such as TSMC, while keeping GlobalFoundries exclusive for 12 nm (or larger) nodes.

The updated wafer supply agreement unlocks many possibilities for AMD. For starters, it can finally build a next-generation sIOD (server I/O die) on a more efficient node than GlobalFoundries 12LP, such as TSMC 7 nm. This transition to 7 nm will be needed as the next-gen "Genoa" EPYC processor could feature future I/O standards such as DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5, and the switching fabric for these could be too power-hungry on 12 nm. The "Zen 4" CPU core complex dies (CCDs) of "Genoa" are expected to be built on TSMC 5 nm.

AMD has registered the steepest single-quarter growth in server CPU sales in 15 years, for Q1-2021, according to Mercury Research data accessed by Tom's Hardware. "While we don't often discuss average selling prices, we note that this quarter saw unusually strong price moves for AMD -- as AMD shipped fewer low-end parts and more high-end parts, as well as shipping many more server parts, the company's average selling price increased significantly," said Dean McCarron of Mercury Research. Unfortunately, the growth in its EPYC server CPU sales also coincides with a drop in notebook CPU sales. It's also interesting to note here that AMD's Q1-2021 performance with server CPUs also coincides with a 20% drop in revenue for its Data Center Group, the business unit responsible for sales of its Xeon server processors.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the maker of various kinds of silicon products, is the manufacturer of AMD's EPYC processors. However, have you ever questioned what CPUs are actually behind TSMC? The answer to that question is quite simple. Today, we have come to know that TSMC is using AMD EPYC processors to power their manufacturing infrastructure and tape out thousands of wafers per month. AMD has published TSMC's case study, which pointed out that the total cost of ownership has been the main challenge of the Taiwanese company. By using AMD EPYC 7702P and 7F72 CPUs, TSMC addresses the need for both reliable and high-performing server infrastructure to power the manufacturing efforts. For research and development purposes, TSMC chose the 7F72 with 24 cores and a high clock speed of 3.2 GHz, which is ideal for the company needs and purposes.

For more details about TSMC's choices and solutions, read the case study here.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2021 of $3.45 billion, operating income of $662 million, net income of $555 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.45. On a non-GAAP* basis, operating income was $762 million, net income was $642 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.52.

"Our business continued to accelerate in the first quarter driven by the best product portfolio in our history, strong execution and robust market demand," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We had outstanding year-over-year revenue growth across all of our businesses and data center revenue more than doubled. Our increased full-year guidance highlights the strong growth we expect across our business based on increasing adoption of our high-performance computing products and expanding customer relationships."

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced AMD EPYC 7003 Series Processor-based server platforms featuring efficiency and performance enhancements in hardware, security, and memory density for the modern data center.

"Big data has become capital today. Large amounts of data and faster answers drive better decisions. TYAN's industry-leading server platforms powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors enable businesses to make more accurate decisions with higher precision," said Danny Hsu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's Server Infrastructure BU. "Moving the bar once more for workload performance, EPYC 7003 Series processors provide the performance needed in the heart of the enterprise to help IT professionals drive faster time to results," said Ram Peddibhotla, corporate vice president, EPYC product management, AMD. "Time is the new metric for efficiency and EPYC 7003 Series processors are the perfect choice for the most diverse workloads, helping provide more and better data to drive better business outcomes."

AMD today announced its 3rd generation EPYC (7003 series) enterprise processors, codenamed "Milan." These processors combine up to 64 of the company's latest "Zen 3" CPU cores, with an updated I/O controller die, and promise significant performance uplifts and new security capabilities over the previous generation EPYC 7002 "Rome." The "Zen 3" CPU cores, AMD claims, introduce an IPC uplift of up to 19% over the previous generation, which when combined by generational increases in CPU clock speeds, bring about significant single-threaded performance increases. The processor also comes with large multi-threaded performance gains thanks to a redesigned CCD.

The new "Zen 3" CPU complex die (CCD) comes with a radical redesign in the arrangement of CPU cores, putting all eight CPU cores of the CCD in a single CCX, sharing a large 32 MB L3 cache. This the total amount of L3 cache addressable by a CPU core, and significantly reduces latencies for multi-threaded workloads. The "Milan" multi-chip module has up to eight such CCDs talking to a centralized server I/O controller die (sIOD) over the Infinity Fabric interconnect.

AMD today announced that its 3rd generation EPYC enterprise processors will launch on March 15, 2021. Codenamed "Milan," these processors are expected to leverage the company's latest "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture to significantly increase IPC (single-threaded performance), and retain compatibility with the the SP3 socket. AMD set up a micro-site where it will stream the 3rd Gen EPYC processor launch event on March 15, at 11 ET (16:00 UTC). "Milan" is rumored to be AMD's final processor architecture on this socket, before transitioning to SP5 and the next-gen processor codenamed "Genoa," sometime in 2022. "Genoa" marks a switch to next-gen I/O such as DDR5 memory and PCIe gen 5.0, along with an increase in CPU core counts.

GIGABYTE Technology, (TWSE: 2376), an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced the G262-ZR0 for HPC, AI, and data analytics. Designed to support the highest-level of performance in GPU computing, the G262-ZR0 incorporates fast PCIe 4.0 throughput in addition to NVIDIA HGX technologies and NVIDIA NVLink to provide industry leading bandwidth performance.

Here are some of the first pictures of the humongous Intel Xeon "Sapphire Rapids-SP" processor, in the flesh. Pictured by YuuKi-AnS on Chinese micro-blogging site bilibili, the engineering sample looks visibly larger than an AMD EPYC. Bound for 2021, this processor will leverage the latest generation of Intel's 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin silicon fabrication node, the latest I/O that include 8-channel DDR5 memory, a large number of PCI-Express gen 5.0 lanes, and ComputeXpress Link (CXL) interconnect. Perhaps the most interesting bit of information from the YuuKi-AnS has to be the mention of an on-package high-bandwidth memory solution. The processors will introduce an IPC uplift over "Ice Lake-SP" processors, as they use the newer "Willow Cove" CPU cores.

AMD is readying its upcoming EPYC processors based on the refined Zen 3 core. Codenamed "Milan", the processor generation is supposed to bring the same number of PCIe lanes and quite possibly similar memory support. The pricing, along with the specifications, has been leaked and now we have information on every model ranging from eight cores to the whopping 64 cores. Thanks to @momomo_us on Twitter, we got ahold of Canadian pricing leaked on the Dell Canada website. Starting from the cheapest design listed here (many are missing here), you would be looking at the EPYC 7543 processor with 32 cores running at 2.8 GHz speed, 256 MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 225 Watts. Such a processor will set you back as much as 2579.69 CAD, which is cheaper compared to the previous generation EPYC 7542 that costs 3214.70 CAD.

Whatever this represents more aggressive pricing to position itself better against the competition, we do not know. The same strategy is applied with the 64 core AMD EPYC 7763 processor (2.45 GHz speed, 256 MB cache, 280 W TDP) as the new Zen 3 based design is priced at 8069.69 CAD, which is cheaper than the 8180.10 CAD price tag of AMD EPYC 7762 CPU.

AMD is expected to announce its upcoming EPYC lineup of processors for server applications based on the new Zen 3 architecture. Codenamed "Milan", AMD is continuing the use of Italian cities as codenames for its processors. Being based on the new Zen 3 core, Milan is expected to bring big improvements over the existing EPYC "Rome" design. Bringing a refined 7 nm+ process, the new EPYC Milan CPUs are going to feature better frequencies, which are getting paired with high core counts. If you are wondering how Zen 3 would look like in server configuration, look no further because we have the upcoming AMD EPYC 7543 32-core processor benchmarked in Geekbench 4 benchmark.

The new EPYC 7543 CPU is a 32 core, 64 thread design with a base clock of 2.8 GHz, and a boost frequency of 3.7 GHz. The caches on this CPU are big, and there is a total of 2048 KB (32 times 32 KB for instruction cache and 32 times 32 KB for data cache) of L1 cache, 16 MB of L2 cache, and as much as 256 MB of L3. In the GB4 test, a single-core test produced 6065 points, while the multi-core run resulted in 111379 points. If you are wondering how that fairs against something like top-end Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 Cascade Lake 28-core CPU, the new EPYC Milan 7543 CPU is capable of fighting two of them at the same time. In a single-core test, the Intel Xeon configuration scores 5048 points, showing that the new Milan CPU has 20% higher single-core performance, while the multi-core score of the dual Xeon setup is 117171 points, which is 5% faster than AMD CPU. The reason for the higher multi-core score is the sheer number of cores that a dual-CPU configuration offers (32 cores vs 56 cores).

AMD may be finding itself riding a new wave of success caused by its accomplishments with the Zen architecture, which in turn bolstered its available R&D for its graphics division and thus turned the entire AMD business on its head. However, success comes at a cost, particularly when you don't own your own fabs and have to vie for capacity with TSMC against its cadre of other clients. I imagine that currently, AMD's HQ has a direct system of levers and pulleys that manage its chip allocation with TSMC: pull this lever and increase number of 7 nm SOC for the next-generation consoles; another controls Ryzen 5000 series; and so on and so on. As we know, production capacity on TSMC's 7 nm is through the roof, and AMD is finding it hard to ship enough of its Zen 3 CPUs and RDNA2 graphics cards. The reported delay for the AMD RX 6700 series may well be a result of AMD overextending its product portfolio on the 7 nm process with foundry partner TSMC.

A report coming from Cowcotland now points towards a 1Q2021 release for AMD's high-performance RX 6700 series, which was initially poised to see the light of day in the current month of January. The RX 6700 series will ship with AMD's Navi 22 chip, which is estimated to be half of the full Navi 21 chip (which puts it at a top configuration of 2560 Stream Processors over 40 CUs). These cards are expected to ship with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory over a 192-bit memory bus. However, it seems that AMD may have delayed the launch for these graphics cards. One can imagine that this move from AMD happens so as to not further dilute the TSMC wafers coming out of the factory, limited as they are, between yet another chip. One which will undoubtedly have lower margins than the company's Zen 3 CPUs, EPYC CPUs, RX 6800 and RX 6900, and that doesn't have the same level of impact on its business relations as console-bound SoCs. Besides, it likely serves AMD best to put out enough of its currently-launched products' to sate demand (RX 6000 series, Ryzen 5000, cof cof) than to launch yet another product with likely too limited availability in relation to the existing demand.

AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation of EPYC processors codenamed Millan. Being based on the company's latest Zen 3 cores, the new EPYC generation is going to deliver a massive IPC boost, spread across many cores. Models are supposed to range anywhere from 16 to 64 cores, to satisfy all of the demanding server workloads. Today, thanks to the leak from ExecutableFix on Twitter, we have the first benchmark of a system containing two of the 64 core, 128 thread Zen 3 based EPYC Milan processors. Running in the 2P configuration the processors achieved a maximum boost clock of 3.7 GHz, which is very high for a server CPU with that many cores.

The system was able to produce a Cinebench R23 score of insane 87878 points. With that many cores, it is no wonder how it is done, however, we need to look at how does it fare against the competition. For comparison, the Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L processor with its 28 cores and 56 threads that boost to 4.0 GHz can score up to 49,876 points. Of course, the scaling to that many cores may not work very well in this example application, so we have to wait and see how it performs in other workloads before jumping to any conclusions. The launch date is unknown for these processors, so we have to wait and report as more information appears.

AMD announced Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) has expanded its AMD-based offerings with a new cloud instance for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2): Amazon EC2 G4ad instances for graphics-optimized workloads. With this new instance, AMD now powers eight Amazon EC2 instance families across 20 global AWS Regions. AMD also announced that Amazon GameLift, a fully managed dedicated game server hosting solution, is now providing its video game hosting customers access to AMD EPYC processor-based Amazon EC2 C5a, M5a and R5a instances.

"Today we build on the strong collaboration between AMD and AWS, which started in 2017. This expansion of our cooperation is a proof point of the continued performance and capabilities that AMD provides its customers," said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center and Embedded Solutions Group, AMD. "Amazon EC2 G4ad instances are the first powered by both AMD EPYC CPUs and Radeon Pro GPUs, and adding to the existing EPYC processor-based instances, they exemplify the ways in which AMD CPUs and GPUs provide fantastic performance and price/performance for AWS customers."

"The high-performance capabilities of the AMD EPYC CPUs and Radeon Pro GPUs are enabling AWS to create a new graphics-focused instance that help us keep our leadership price/performance offerings that our customers expect," said David Brown, Vice President, Amazon EC2, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "We're delighted to continue this great collaboration with AMD, enabling the Amazon EC2 G4ad instances to provide the industry's best price performance for graphics-intensive applications."

ASRock Rack, a branch of ASRock focused on making server products, has today launched a new motherboard that can accommodate up to 64 core AMD EPYC CPU. Built on the new, proprietary form factor called "Deep Mini-ITX", the ROMED4ID-2T motherboard is just a bit bigger than the standard ITX board. The standard ITX boards are 170 x 170 mm, while this Deep Mini-ITX form extends the board by a bit. It measures 170 x 208.28 mm, or 6.7" x 8.2" for all of the American readers. ASRock specifies that the board supports AMD's second-generation EPYC "Rome" 7002 series processors. Of course, the socket for these CPUs is socket SP3 (LGA4094) with 4094 pins.

The motherboard comes with 4 DDR4 DIMM slots, of any type. Supported DIMM types are R-DIMM, LR-DIMM, and NV-DIMM. If you want the best capacity, LR-DIMM use enables you to use up to 256 GB of memory. When it comes to expansion, you can hook-up any PCIe 4.0 device to the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. There is also an M.2 2280 key present, so you can fit in one of those high-speed PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 SSDs. For connection to the outside world, the board uses an Intel X550-AT2 controller that controls two RJ45 10 GbE connectors. There are also two Slimline (PCIe 4.0 x8 or 8 SATA 6 Gb/s), and four Slimline (PCIe 4.0 x8) storage U.2 ports.

The 56th edition of the TOP500 saw the Japanese Fugaku supercomputer solidify its number one status in a list that reflects a flattening performance growth curve. Although two new systems managed to make it into the top 10, the full list recorded the smallest number of new entries since the project began in 1993.

The entry level to the list moved up to 1.32 petaflops on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, a small increase from 1.23 petaflops recorded in the June 2020 rankings. In a similar vein, the aggregate performance of all 500 systems grew from 2.22 exaflops in June to just 2.43 exaflops on the latest list. Likewise, average concurrency per system barely increased at all, growing from 145,363 cores six months ago to 145,465 cores in the current list.

AMD today announced the new AMD Instinct MI100 accelerator - the world's fastest HPC GPU and the first x86 server GPU to surpass the 10 teraflops (FP64) performance barrier. Supported by new accelerated compute platforms from Dell, Gigabyte, HPE, and Supermicro, the MI100, combined with AMD EPYC CPUs and the ROCm 4.0 open software platform, is designed to propel new discoveries ahead of the exascale era.

Built on the new AMD CDNA architecture, the AMD Instinct MI100 GPU enables a new class of accelerated systems for HPC and AI when paired with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. The MI100 offers up to 11.5 TFLOPS of peak FP64 performance for HPC and up to 46.1 TFLOPS peak FP32 Matrix performance for AI and machine learning workloads. With new AMD Matrix Core technology, the MI100 also delivers a nearly 7x boost in FP16 theoretical peak floating point performance for AI training workloads compared to AMD's prior generation accelerators.

AMD has won a contract to empower the LUMI supercomputer, designed for the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) in conjunction with 10 European countries. The contract will see AMD provide both the CPU and GPU innards of the LUMI, set to be populated with next-generation AMD Epyc CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs. The supercomputer, which is set to enter operation come next year, will deliver an estimated 552 petaflop/s - higher than the world's current fastest supercomputer, Fugaku in Japan, which reaches peak performance of 513 petaflop/s - and is an Arm-powered affair.

The contract for LUMI's construction has been won by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which will be providing an HPE Cray EX supercomputer powered by the aforementioned AMD hardware. LUMI has an investment cost set at 200 million euros, for both hardware, installation, and the foreseeable lifetime of its operation. This design win by AMD marks another big contract for the company, which was all but absent from the supercomputing space until launch, and subsequent iterations, of its Zen architecture and latest generations of Instinct HPC accelerators.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today introduced the lightning-fast NVMe all-flash TS-h2490FU. With 24 drive bays for U.2 NVMe Gen 3 x4 SSD, the TS-h2490FU provides up to 472K/205K iSCSI 4K random read/write IOPS with ultra-low latency. Equipped with four 25 GbE SFP28 and two 2.5 GbE RJ45 LAN ports, five PCIe Gen 4 slots, and 1100 W redundant power supplies, the TS-h2490FU provides exceptional hardware and connectivity. The ZFS-based QuTS hero operating system also includes powerful applications for data reduction and SSD optimization, ensuring that SSD performance and lifespan is maximized for mission-critical virtualized workloads and data centers with all-flash investments.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed the installation of a next-generation high performance computing platform, with aim to enhance its ongoing R&D efforts in support of the nation's response to COVID-19. Named Chicoma, the new platform is poised to demonstrate Hewlett Packard Enterprise's new HPE Cray EX supercomputer architecture for solving complex scientific problems.

"As extensive social and economic impacts from COVID-19 continue to grip the nation, Los Alamos scientists are actively engaged in a number of critical research efforts ranging from therapeutics design to epidemiological modeling," said Irene Qualters, Associate Laboratory Director for Simulation and Computing at Los Alamos. "High Performance Computing is playing a critical role by allowing scientists to model the complex phenomena involved in viral evolution and propagation."

Today, AMD and Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), announced the deployment of AMD EPYC 7702 processors for use in a new, high performance computing system. The EPYC processor-based supercomputer will deliver the 2.36 petaflops of computing power OIST plans to use for scientific research at the University. The Scientific Computing & Data Analysis Section (SCDA) of OIST plans to implement the new supercomputer for supporting OIST computationally intensive research ranging from bioinformatics, computational neuroscience, and physics. SCDA adopted AMD EPYC after significant growth, including a 2X increase in users.

"2020 is a milestone year for OIST with new research units expanding the number of research areas. This growth is driving a significant increase in our computational needs," said Eddy Taillefer, Ph.D., Section Leader, Scientific Computing & Data Analysis Section. "Under the common resource model for which the computing system is shared by all OIST users we needed a significant increase in core-count capacity to both absorb these demands and cope with the significant growth of OIST. The latest AMD EPYC processor was the only technology that could match this core-count need in a cost-performance effective way."

AMD today highlighted the latest expansion of the AMD EPYC processor ecosystem for virtualized and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) environments with VMware adding support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Encrypted State (SEV-ES) in its newest vSphere release, 7.0U1. With the latest release, VMware vSphere now enables AMD SEV-ES, which is part of AMD Infinity Guard, a robust set of modern, hardware enabled features found in all 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. In addition to VM memory encryption, SEV-ES also provides encryption of CPU registers and provides VMware customers with easy-to-implement and enhanced security for their environments.

"As the modern data center continues to evolve into a virtualized, hybrid cloud environment, AMD and VMware are working together to make sure customers have access to systems that provide high levels of performance on virtualization workloads, while enabling advanced security features that are simple to implement for better protection of data," said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. "A virtualized data center with AMD EPYC processors and VMware enables customers to modernize the data center and have access to high-performance and leading-edge security features, across a wide variety of OEM platforms."