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Are we going to see some AMD Ryzen server offers? - Page 2
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Are we going to see some AMD Ryzen server offers?

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Comments

  • AaronW said: if everything goes okay we'll have them on the site next week.

    Any idea what the pricing category will be? Are you likely to offer them hourly? Do you expect to have lots of them available or just a few? Just wondering, thanks ;).

  • I'm not sure but I mean to remember having read about AMD having plans to produce for the server market, too. IIRC that board was dual 12C/24T "server ryzens".

    But no matter whether I remember correctly or whether it'll be 8/16 cpus, the server market will come later, I think. a) That market is more conservative and probably waits a while for eventual hiccups being ironed out, b) that market is less important (and harder) for AMD.

  • The Ryzen server is called Naples and I don't think they've announced any specs. It's supposedly coming in 2H17. However, here on LET, we're used to desktop cpus in dedicated server offers. So I'd be interested in trying a Ryzen desktop dedi, including the Ryzen 1700 (slower than the 1800+ but runs at 65 watts).

    Ryzen desktop CPUs support ECC memory so I hope Aaron would use that even if it costs a few bucks more.

    The Ryzen 1700 sounds interesting as a colo CPU since on a 1 amp circuit it would leave a fair amount for ram and hard drives.

  • @Vita said:

    @AlyssaD said:
    Probably not so much. You can get much better TDP on Intel based processors. That TDP will affect your long term cost. That long run cost may be more than saving a few dollars on the AMD processors.

    65W TDP for this performance is not so bad compare it to similar performing Intel Xeon CPUs its very similar, even AMD has a lower TDP in some cases.

    The 1700 is rated at 65 TDP. That doesn't mean it will pull 65 watts. TDP means "thermal design power" which in turn means that it's the amount of heat produced that the heatsink needs to dissipate. So in reality, it pulls well above 65 watts.
    So before crunching numbers, keep that in mind.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • Makkesk8 said: So in reality, it pulls well above 65 watts. So before crunching numbers, keep that in mind.

    Oh interesting. Does that mean the average power is 65W but it can spike higher? Presumably any power going in has to eventually go out the heat sink.

    I'm imagining a storage server with a Ryzen board, 4 to 8 hdd's, a small ssd, and 16gb or 32gb ECC memory (don't need huge ram). Do I need a 2 amp circuit? Any chance of needing more than 2 amps? What about with a 95W Ryzen, if I need 2 amps anyway?

    Thanks.

  • @Makkesk8 said:
    The 1700 is rated at 65 TDP. That doesn't mean it will pull 65 watts. TDP means "thermal design power" which in turn means that it's the amount of heat produced that the heatsink needs to dissipate. So in reality, it pulls well above 65 watts.
    So before crunching numbers, keep that in mind.

    Nope. TDP means the maximum power that must be dissipated in normal operation, where "normal operation" means exactly that, i.e. not extreme operation. Note that occasional power peaks (above TDP) are included within TDP. This is especially true for the ryzen which has quite fine granularity in power control ("getting the most out of the cpu")
    Average power usually is considerably below TDP.

    @willie was right although I personally, while being quite interested in the 1700, wouldn't (at least not yet) consider any ryzen a good colo cpu.

    Thanked by 1GZS
  • bsdguy said: , i.e. not extreme operation.

    What does "extreme operation" mean? I run long compute jobs but I wouldn't have thought of that as extreme. I'm not sure what would cause more power consumption than that, assuming I'm not overclocking.

    If I underclocked the 1800+ or 1700+ to the 1700's speed, would that likely decrease the power draw to the 1700's levels? Or is the 1700 likely to be a different or selected low-powered part? It doesn't sound likely to me that AMD would do that.

  • Well, for a start pretty every chip producer has a selection process that aims for the best but has a "filtering stage" mechanism that basically fills the "product crates". So, say the top of the line is the processor model "hot-3700" (3700 MHz) but in any production run you only have so many chips meeting the hot-3700 spec. So, those chips that don't meet it but are good enough for, say 3400 MHz will end up being sold as hot-3400, and so on, until finally the second worst ones will end up being hot 2800 and the ones not even good enough for that go to the trash bin.

    Certainly AMD goes that route, too with its models. But I assume that the 1700 also gets some internals trimmed down to be power saving (Hence, no, simply underclocking an 1800+ will quite probably not give you a 65 W TDP cpu unless you underclock it way below the 1700). But yes, the two single most important factors are frequency along which power consumption increases exponentially, and voltage (the lower the less power is consumed).

    As for the other thing, "extreme operation", that means having the cpu run over some period of time operations that are power expensive. As opposed to a normal operations mix.

    But before throwing parties let's see how intel reacts. The ryzen is a very nice chip, indeed, from what we know today and it hits a sweet spot, but intel isn't an easy opponent and does pretty much every single factor better - but not in one package.

  • xyzxyz Member

    bsdguy said: But I assume that the 1700 also gets some internals trimmed down to be power saving (Hence, no, simply underclocking an 1800+ will quite probably not give you a 65 W TDP cpu unless you underclock it way below the 1700).

    This is not true. 1700 has a significantly lower base clock than the 1800X, so consumes much less power.

    AMD's definition of TDP here is different to Intel's. With Intel, the stated power seems to be an absolute maximum, whilst AMD's rating is more of a typical usage. From what I've seen, the 1800X (rated 95W) seems to draw similar power to a 6900K (rated 140W) under load. At idle, the 1800X is actually a fair bit better than the 6900K.

    Which means that the 1700 will use more than 65W under load, but power usage relative to Intel is very good.

    willie said: If I underclocked the 1800+ or 1700+ to the 1700's speed, would that likely decrease the power draw to the 1700's levels?

    I'd say it's likely, assuming you're able to reliably underclock it as such. There's a rumour that Ryzen may actually support cTDP, but isn't yet enabled in most motherboards. Here's a thread with more info if you're interested.

    Thanked by 2vimalware Yura
  • @xyz

    You do not contradict me but you leave out some factors. The 1700 is almost certainly not at 65W TDP only due to a lower frequency. That plays an important role but can't reach 65W TDP by itself alone.

    As for intel and smd's xDP numbers, forget about intel; they invented "sdp" to be able to offer lower numbers. I'm not yet 100% certain about ryzen but generally amd gives more reasonable and honest numbers and their tdp actually is a tdp.

    Does the ryzen occasionally (and for low to mid range nanoseconds) go over 65W? Yes. But that's meaningless as the decisive factor is die temperature. Ryzens tdp can for all practical purposes be considered to be the max power. After all, electricity usage isn't measured or billed in Watt-microseconds.

  • xyzxyz Member

    bsdguy said: That plays an important role but can't reach 65W TDP by itself alone.

    And on what basis do you make that claim?

    Historically, no CPU manufacturer has done anything like 'trim the uArch' on different SKUs, and Ryzen seems to be no different (plus it makes no sense to do this for a manufacturing perspective). Intel sometimes disables features on CPU SKUs for the purposes of market segmentation, but usually clockspeed/power and cores are key differentiating points for the various SKUs.

    bsdguy said: Ryzens tdp can for all practical purposes be considered to be the max power.

    This doesn't appear to be what all the reviews out there are saying, for example: https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X-Review-Now-and-Zen/Power-Consumption-and-Conclusions

  • The review you link to talks about system power.

    As for 1700x vs 1700 maybe you are right; I'm not intending to play a who is right game here. Looking at the numbers, though, and doing a rough calculation it seems to me that frequency difference alone doesn't explain it.

    Be that as it may, the decisive point, I think, is going to be intels reaction. If they come up with a similarly spec'd - and priced - cpu, chances are that AMD won't make a big cut; the buyer herds just don't care about TDP subtleties and intel is perceived as the standard.

  • xyzxyz Member

    bsdguy said: The review you link to talks about system power.

    If everything else is constant, it's not a bad proxy. But the main point is to show that AMD's 95W CPU roughly draws the same as Intel's 140W CPU.

    Otherwise, I'm not sure how you can reliably test CPU power draw just by itself.

    bsdguy said: If they come up with a similarly spec'd - and priced - cpu

    Speculation on my part, but I'd say the chances are slim. Intel like being in the premium category, so you can expect them to charge similarly. Perhaps they'll drop prices slightly, but AMD will most likely still be better value.

  • zrunnerzrunner Member
    edited March 2017

    Offtopic but while reading the thread i noticed @AaronW is back on LET, he went MIA for quite awhile and thought something happened too him as he stopped replying to my LET PM's and emails, (oh, maybe i just bugged him too much) he tends to do good postings.

    Also noticed @oplink made an account here, is that Ryan?

  • @xyz

    Not necessarily. intel would be ill advised to simply ignore a competitor selling for half the price.
    My guess is that intel will use the time that amd needs to gain reputation and to cut into the market to create a competitive offer. They already have different product lines for different market segments, so it would be easy and logic to adapt.

    And the amd threat isn't to be taken lightly because once amd has their naples chips out they still have less chips than intel but they then cover quite significant market segments.

    Whatever. I guess ryzen will bring us quite a bit more than a couple of chips.

  • xyz said: Perhaps they'll drop prices slightly,

    They've already dropped prices quite a bit. I get the impression that Ryzen's architecture is superior to Kaby Lake, and Glofo's 16nm process is almost as good as Intel's 14nm (the nm line width is now an almost meaningless marketing term). Intel is still ahead in fab tech since they've turned out several 14nm generations already and will have 10nm soon, and they have their own architecture improvements in the works, but for now all they can do to compete with Ryzen is ship more high core count chips at lower prices.

  • @willie

    ... which is an interesting point anyway. I might be wrong but the way I see things there will be two major trends,

    a) ever less power but with reasonable performance. Modern Atoms, Xeon-D and to a degree ryzen are good candidates. This will be fueled by both the need to put ever more cores into racks and by the competition with Arm and upcoming competitors.

    b) ever more cores per package. Single thread performance is less critical today. With modern Serdes, particularly PCIe, and high speed network links Suns old motto "the network is the computer" has become everyday reality. What is needed for many workload (and btw clouds and software everything (e.g.SDN)) is many many cores.
    (Just think of Power servers with 192 cores ...).
    This is also somewhat pushed by Arm going that way definitely and already offering some high core count chips and architectures.

  • There was a low powered 16 core Atom announced recently (C3950). Total performance should be in the low E5 range since the individual cores have higher ipc than old Atom cores, plus there's a lot of them.

    The Power servers have 24 cores and 192 threads, i.e. very high hyperthreading factor, which apparently works better with that architecture than with the x86.

    The 48 core Cavium chip apparently is a little disappointing, with a 2 socket 96 core setup being in mid E5 range at best. But you can affordably rent one by the hour at packet.net, so I might give it a try sometime just for laughs.

    Thanked by 1deadbeef
  • AaronWAaronW Member, Patron Provider

    @willie said:

    AaronW said: if everything goes okay we'll have them on the site next week.

    Any idea what the pricing category will be? Are you likely to offer them hourly? Do you expect to have lots of them available or just a few? Just wondering, thanks ;).

    They'll be comparable to the I7-7700k's we're doing. For now there won't be any hourly or preconfig. They'll be custom only while we see how the product is received. If it's received well then we'll probably make a preconfig for it. Currently we have plenty available to get started.

    Thanked by 1willie
  • VpsAGVpsAG Member

    I doubt anyone would be interested in buying some AMD Ryzen for their servers. You have to support a new infrastructure and even if you do that, how many server motherboards will have support for that socket?

  • I read some tests: Ubuntu 14.04 needs a new kernel to operate on Ryzen... so yes I think the server market would refrain from jumping in the investment outright unless some thorough testimonials are out.

  • xyzxyz Member
    edited March 2017

    willie said: They've already dropped prices quite a bit.

    Who? Source?

    I get the impression that Ryzen's architecture is superior to Kaby Lake

    In what way? IPC? Power efficiency?

    Glofo's 16nm process is almost as good as Intel's 14nm (the nm line width is now an almost meaningless marketing term).

    Samsung's 14nm LPP is generally considered to be behind Intel (particularly considering it was designed for phones), even their first gen 14nm process, so Ryzen being what it is, is quite amazing.

    will have 10nm soon

    The rumours about Cannon Lake suggest that it will only target low power notebooks, with Coffee Lake (also 8th gen Core @ 14nm) targeting the desktop (and conversely, the Xeon E3v7). Skylake Xeon (E5v5) should probably be out this year, but that's still 14nm.

    So whilst 10nm is coming this year or next, it may not show up in servers for quite a while after that.

    willie said: The Power servers have 24 cores and 192 threads, i.e. very high hyperthreading factor, which apparently works better with that architecture than with the x86.

    May be of interest: Intel's Xeon Phi (Knight's Landing) has 72 cores with 4 way SMT, yielding 288 threads. I suspect the high SMT factor has limited uses though (workloads that mostly stall on memory access, for example), particularly considering that Silvermont is mostly a 2uop/clock in-order design.

  • xyz said:

    willie said: They've already dropped prices quite a bit.

    Who? Source?

    From Slashdot about a week ago. I posted a link in Cest Pit.

    I get the impression that Ryzen's architecture is superior to Kaby Lake

    In what way? IPC? Power efficiency?

    Possibly both. See the very long article at anandtech.com.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll
    edited March 2017

    The chip is good.
    Motherboard sucks. It's simply not ready for server line, yet.

    Thanked by 1gwnd1989
  • xyz said: May be of interest: Intel's Xeon Phi (Knight's Landing) has 72 cores with 4 way SMT, yielding 288 threads. I suspect the high SMT factor has limited uses though (workloads that mostly stall on memory access, for example), particularly considering that Silvermont is mostly a 2uop/clock in-order design.

    Notably unlike the old ones they are also bootable as a normal CPU, SuperMicro and HP already produce work stations for it - works like any x86-64 CPU ultimately, unlike the PCIe cards.

    Have CPUs now and MB, but not tested yet - 1700X/Gigabyte.

  • About the most interesting aspect for me personally (at the time being) is the chance to finally break the 4 cores barriers on notebooks.

    As for the servers I stick to what I said. Ryzen will take some time to be in servers and that doesn't change by some manufacturers playing with ryzen based servers. One reason being that first all major OS must fully support ryzen - and that's far more work than to reach "I run Ubuntu on it". Ugly example: virtualization.

    I guess amd knows that and will bring out naples only later, once the architecture has matured somewhat and is well supported.

  • WSSWSS Member

    @bsdguy said:
    About the most interesting aspect for me personally (at the time being) is the chance to finally break the 4 cores barriers on notebooks.

    I've got an 8 core I7..

  • xyz said: Who? Source?

    Intel dropped top of line pricing for 6/7 series CPUs, not very visible in market yet but first EU retailers start dropping already.

  • xyzxyz Member

    willie said: From Slashdot about a week ago. I posted a link in Cest Pit.

    Can't be bothered looking it up.
    I know that there was a story about prices supposedly being dropped, though it turned out to be bunk as it was based solely off Microcenter (which does deals every now and then).

    willie said: Possibly both. See the very long article at anandtech.com.

    Can't be bothered reading. But AMD themselves claim that they are behind Kaby Lake on IPC.

    WSS said: I've got an 8 core I7..

    That's an interesting notebook you have there.

    William said: Intel dropped top of line pricing for 6/7 series CPUs, not very visible in market yet but first EU retailers start dropping already.

    Interesting to hear. Intel haven't updated their RRPs to indicate any sort of price drop yet, who knows whether that's accurate or not.

    Regardless of what Intel does, I'd expect retailers to drop prices to help clear stock.

    Thanked by 1yomero
  • WSSWSS Member
    edited March 2017

    @xyz said:

    WSS said: I've got an 8 core I7..

    That's an interesting notebook you have there.

    Not really.

    [    0.000000] DMI: Hewlett-Packard HP EliteBook 8460p/161C, BIOS 68SCF Ver. F.08 08/26/2011
    model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) t CPU @ 2.20GHz
    

    Yes, I know it's actually 4 cores and 2 threads, but I just had to poke at @bsdguy.

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