AMD launches 4th Gen EPYC data centre CPUs

AMD has launched its fourth-generation EPYC processors for data centres, codenamed “Genoa”.

The chip, which scales up to 96 cores, is aimed to help customers reduce their physical footprint by allowing them to deploy fewer servers to provide the same compute needs.

Genoa is based on AMD’s 5 nanometre Zen 4 core architecture, which was released in September on the Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU range.

“This is a turning point for the data centre industry. These new AMD EPYC processors enable our partners and customers to create amazon, high performance and energy efficient solutions that support the industry’s insatiable need for compute and efficiency,” AMD chief executive Lisa Su said.

“Our momentum in data centre is undeniable. Not only is 4th Gen AMD EPYC setting the bar for server CPUs, we also offer an incomparable lineup of data centre technology across CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, adaptive SOCs and DPUs that position us well for long-term growth and share gains in the data centre.”

AMD said the chip aims to deliver optimisations across market segments and applications, while also helping customers free up data centre resources to create more workload processing and accelerate output.

Genoa also expanded on AMD Infinity Guard for its security, with twice the number of encryption keys from previous generations. It also now offers support for DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen 5 for AI and machine learning applications, as well as CXL 1.1+ for memory expansion.

Compared to the 3rd generation “Milan”, AMD said Genoa has 107 percent higher performance in cloud, 123 percent higher performance in high performance computing (HPC) and 94 percent higher performance in enterprise, according to benchmarking data from SPEC CPU.

The company also revealed the roadmap of upcoming EPYC chips, the cloud-native “Bergamo”, technical “Genoa-X” and the telco and edge specific “Siena”, while the 5th generation EPYC will be under the “Turin” family codename.

Bergamo and Genoa-X are slated to be released sometime in the first half of 2023, and Siena will launch in the second half of 2023.

Earlier this week, AMD rival Intel revealed its new data centre processor Sapphire Rapids is set to launch in January 2023, alongside the Ponte Vecchio GPU as part of the Max Series to boost data centre productivity.

Nico Arboleda travelled to San Francisco for the AMD EPYC launch as a guest of AMD.