128 Core Workstation, Anyone?

if you haven’t heard, AMD has taken the server class CPU game to a new level, or perhaps more accurately, into a new realm. With the second generation EPYC 7002 CPUs, AMD’s flagship EPYC 7742 offers 64 CPU cores per chip, compared to Intel’s scalable Xeon flagship Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280 CPU which offers 28 cores – more than twice the core count and compute capability – for over $5,000 less at current prices.  Game-changing in every sense of the word.

Coming to the a-X2 Mediaworkstation soon.

We are currently testing the EPYC 7702 CPU in our a-X2 Mediaworkstation, our dual EPYC 7002 workstation, and upcoming, brand new a-X1 Mediaworkstation, which features a single EPYC 7002 CPU.  With support from our partners at Supermicro, these units should be ready to order the week of October 1. For fully multi-threaded workflows, our a-X2 will be an up-to 128 Core workstation, and our a-X1 will offer up to 64 cores, both at Intel crushing prices.

Here’s a list of AMD’s current EPYC 7002 processors which we’ll be offering.

Technical Improvements over first gen EPYC 7001

Technical note, with AMD’s first generation of EPYC, one of the big disadvantages was that AMD had built its 32 core CPUs on 8-core silicon dies, attaching each one to two memory channels, resulting in a non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA). A number of applications saw quite a few NUMA balancing issues, which applied in both Linux and Windows 10 environments.

The New 2nd Gen EPYC 7002 “Rome” architecture has solved this. The CPU design implements a central I/O hub, and through this the cores can communicate to the DRAM and PCIe lanes contained within, or other cores directly.

In addition, the EPYC 7002 CPUs offer 128 PCIe lanes per CPU for extraordinary expandability, GPU compute availability, networking, storage and i/o possibilities.

If you have any questions about our upcoming a-X2 128 Core Workstation or a-X1 64 Core workstation updates, or have general questions about your workflow you’d like to go over, please email or call us and we’ll be happy to help.