Since the announcement of AMD’s Zen 3 core microarchitecture, we expect three product series to be announced: Ryzen desktop, mobile Ryzen and enterprise EPYC. So far, desktop parts have already been released and are in retail (if you can find them), and mobile Ryzen processors are part of AMD’s disclosures at CES this week for retail in February. Only the EPYC based on Zen 3 remains, which AMD decided to see as part of its CES presentation today.
Regarding the design of the Zen 3 EPYC ‘Milan’ processors, we expect an almost seamless transition from the previous Zen 2 EPYC ‘Rome’ ecosystem, with pin-compatible processors offering up to 64 cores and 128 PCIe 4.0 tracks. For performance, if desktop processors are a benchmark, we should expect an IPC gain of + 19% as well. The question remains as to frequencies and efficiency, and when the time comes for AMD to announce the product stack, we’ll see where the solution is over the competition – if AMD has a significant competitive advantage, prices will undoubtedly rise accordingly. The previous generation EPYC 7742 had a ‘list price’ of $ 6950 for comparison.
In today’s presentation, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su presented the weather simulation code known as WRF, with two of the new Milan 32-core processors against Intel’s popular 28-core Xeon Gold 6258R (we we analyzed them). The demonstration simulated a 6-hour weather pattern in the continental United States, for which the double-socket Milan was 46% faster than Intel. This was calculated based on the final cut of the simulation frame in the keynote, which showed that where Intel was 56% complete, AMD was 82% complete.
+ 68% for single socket, + 46% for double socket
AMD’s own metric then showed a + 68% difference when comparing a single socket solution. AMD did not provide exact details about the rest of the system used in its tests. It should be made clear that, as a preview, we cannot validate AMD’s performance statements.
We expect more details about Milan and the AMD portfolio later this year. Sooner or later.