AMD To Unveil Next-Gen Server Processors On 10 November

[jaxa]

At 96 cores, they will exceed the core count of every Xeon Phi that was released (but not thread count yet, even with Bergamo's 256). Then maybe up to 256 cores, 512 threads with Turin.

There will probably be at least another 3 major nodes after TSMC N3, so maybe we'll see 1024 cores before everything is forced to go full 3D. On a 'C' variant if not regular cores.

[zeealpal]

I think you'd do better by dialing back the power limits than clock speed, if your BIOS supports it. Recent Intel BIOS typically lets you adjust PL1 and PL2 (which is the "turbo" limit). Not sure how much control AMD gives you over the equivalents.

Absolutely, its PPT (Package Power Tracking) to limit the overall W drawn by the CPU. I've set mine to 71W for my 5900X, and for normal browsing or light / medium gaming there is no noticeable impact on clock speeds. Only when running something like Blender, which I use my GPUs for anyhow does it have an impact.

[stormcrow]

But (am I naive?), that all depends on actual use, doesn't it ? I don't see the point of limiting tb/ht. That would have made sense before throttling and power management. But today ?

I mean if you don't do much, the cpu will not be warm/noisy/high consuming. But if you require more power, you'd be happy to have the cpu ready to provide it, and not limited.

I dont disable tb/ht, and most of the time my cpu is completely silent. Or rather "under the (low) noise of the hard disk". (my gpu is fanless)

There are some potential exploits via the Spectre route for some HT-type enabled processors. If you're ultra paranoid you can disable it at the sacrifice of multithread performance. How much performance you lose depends on the CPU, application, etc. I doubt you'd get much power efficiency gain doing so versus not over-clocking, using the proper power management profile, etc., but I'd certainly bow to hard numbers that show otherwise.

I've yet to see any in-the-wild (actively used malware) that exploits HT speculative execution vulnerabilities, however, because there's so much low hanging fruit out there already that targeting specific CPU model groups is going to be hit or miss. It's far more easy to target OS vulnerabilities, social engineering, and especially misconfigurations where you're practically guaranteed penetration.

That said, usually it's just a matter of picking the right power management profile to get reasonable performance v. energy efficiency & thermal management. It's pretty extreme to actively disable certain functions entirely.

[coder]

First thing I do on a new machine nowadays, is disable Turbo Boost, and disable Hyperthreading. Machine runs very cool and quiet now. I'm perfectly happy with a 3.4 Ghz base clock. I have no need for a 5 Ghz boost that heats the room and makes my pc sound like a leaf blower.

I think you'd do better by dialing back the power limits than clock speed, if your BIOS supports it. Recent Intel BIOS typically lets you adjust PL1 and PL2 (which is the "turbo" limit). Not sure how much control AMD gives you over the equivalents.

The reason being, if you disable turbo, you're losing performance even on code with low parallelism that wouldn't consume much power. However, even disabling turbo doesn't mean your CPU fan won't spin up on a AVX-heavy workload. So, rather than target clockspeed as a proxy for power consumption, better to directly tackle the actual power thresholds.

[coder]

Contrary to the desktop parts, this release may focus more in efficiency, better showing Zen 4 gains in IPC.

Genoa will have up to 96 cores!!

Speaking of efficiency, I'm curious whether they'll say anything about Bergamo, which is the Zen 4C variant, with up to 128 cores.

[orzel]

First thing I do on a new machine nowadays, is disable Turbo Boost, and disable Hyperthreading. Machine runs very cool and quiet now. I'm perfectly happy with a 3.4 Ghz base clock. I have no need for a 5 Ghz boost that heats the room and makes my pc sound like a leaf blower.

But (am I naive?), that all depends on actual use, doesn't it ? I don't see the point of limiting tb/ht. That would have made sense before throttling and power management. But today ?

I mean if you don't do much, the cpu will not be warm/noisy/high consuming. But if you require more power, you'd be happy to have the cpu ready to provide it, and not limited.

I dont disable tb/ht, and most of the time my cpu is completely silent. Or rather "under the (low) noise of the hard disk". (my gpu is fanless)

[torsionbar28]

CThe desktop launch, focused on getting the biggest bar on reviewers benchmarks, led to a arms race with Intel where now CPUs come overclocked by the factory, letting users like me, that prefer a cool and quiet system, with a bad impression.

First thing I do on a new machine nowadays, is disable Turbo Boost, and disable Hyperthreading. Machine runs very cool and quiet now. I'm perfectly happy with a 3.4 Ghz base clock. I have no need for a 5 Ghz boost that heats the room and makes my pc sound like a leaf blower.

[dragorth]

amd should have one announcement meeting a year. server cpus, desktop cpus, mobile cpus, desktop gpu and datacenter gpus. what is the point on dragging this all out? they have way too many pr people giving themselves busy work.

These each are geared to different markets. Essentially, they do have one a year, geared for the market they plan to sell to. Now the fact we are interested is a bonus for them but they don't plan on selling massively to us, because there aren't enough of us to buy in the quantities they want an need to sell in.

[r1348]

amd should have one announcement meeting a year. server cpus, desktop cpus, mobile cpus, desktop gpu and datacenter gpus. what is the point on dragging this all out? they have way too many pr people giving themselves busy work.

They're different products released at different times.

[M@GOid]

Contrary to the desktop parts, this release may focus more in efficiency, better showing Zen 4 gains in IPC.

The desktop launch, focused on getting the biggest bar on reviewers benchmarks, led to a arms race with Intel where now CPUs come overclocked by the factory, letting users like me, that prefer a cool and quiet system, with a bad impression.