
AMD muscles in on Xeon’s turf as it unveils Epyc - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/amds-zen-steps-into-the-server-room-with-epyc/
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wyldfire
Pretty impressive specs.

My favorites:

* Cortex A-5 security/boot processor

* High throughput I/O (I always thought QPI was a great improvement over HT, seems like they've gone one further)

* 290GB/s memory controller (excellent for algorithms that need to span many many GB and can't fit into a GPU)

Clever bit, comparing against Bulldozer in places where they can't beat Xeon.

All in all, looks like the competition has truly heated up.

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tux1968
It's unfortunate that they have built in USB 3.0 controllers rather than 3.1,
especially given that Thunderbolt wont be available with AMD based systems.

~~~
qubex
I hadn't been aware that Thunderbolt wouldn't be available on AMD systems...
indeed my understanding was that Intel's release of Thunderbolt royalty-free
open specs opened the path for inclusion by anybody. Was I wrong?

~~~
theandrewbailey
That spec opening was only _announced_ a month ago. It's not going to be open
until next year[0], far too late for inclusion into silicon that's probably
being manufactured right now.

[0] "In addition to Intel’s Thunderbolt silicon, _next year_ Intel plans to
make the Thunderbolt protocol specification available to the industry under a
nonexclusive, royalty-free license."
[https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/envision-world-
thunder...](https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/envision-world-
thunderbolt-3-everywhere/)

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justin66
No word on APUs, no word on HSA. Is HSA just dead?

~~~
undersuit
The AM4 socket that accepts the new non-APU Ryzen chips has support for the
eventual APUs that will be released. All AM4 motherboards have display options
built-in AFAIK, Neweggs shows the majority have HDMI ports on board but some
have DisplayPort. AMD will eventually release the APUs probably under the
Ryzen 3 brand.

~~~
justin66
The promise of HSA was to make computation in both CPUs and APUs seamless.
Nobody is even talking about it now.

~~~
undersuit
Maybe it's far enough along now. Now one talks about SSE anymore, did it go
away?

The discrete dies on Epyc all communicate with faster version of PCI-E(the
Infinity Fabric), GPUs communicate with PCE-E, SSDs communicate with PCI-E.

AMD certainly hasn't given up on HSA:
[http://www.amd.com/system/files/2017-06/TIRIAS-AMD-Epyc-
GPU-...](http://www.amd.com/system/files/2017-06/TIRIAS-AMD-Epyc-GPU-
Server.pdf)

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brentis
Between this, iMac GPU deal a few days ago, and mining crypto; I've went ahead
and bought a ton of AMD shares.

