Running The AMD EPYC 9754 "Bergamo" CPUs With A 320W cTDP To Enhance Power Efficiency

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Running The AMD EPYC 9754 "Bergamo" CPUs With A 320W cTDP To Enhance Power Efficiency

The new AMD EPYC Bergamo and Genoa-X processors have been very fascinating in the lab from the performance angle and the many different features and knobs provided by these new high-end server processors focused on dense cloud and energy-efficient deployments and HPC/AI, respectively. With Bergamo the flagship AMD EPYC 9754 provides 128 cores with SMT and the Zen 4C cores still boast AVX-512. Another nifty aspect on this high core count CPU catering to cloud service providers is the adjustable TDP from 320 to Watts. Prior Phoronix benchmarks have looked at the default 360 Watt performance and the 400W at the high-end with power determinism mode while today's article is looking at the efficiency gains made possible by pulling back to a 320W cTDP.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/epyc-9754-320w

[paulocoghi]

Typo:

When taking the geometric mean of all the benchmarks, the EPYC 9754 2P at 320 Watts was running at around 99% the performance of the default 320 (360?) Watt configuration.

[bug77]

Impressive efficiency indeed. :thumbsup:

[schmidtbag]

Interesting how it wasn't unanimously more efficient - there were 2 tests where the 400W TDP was more efficient.

[uxmkt]

Impressive efficiency indeed. :thumbsup:

Could probably feed double the cores with the same power and lose less than 50% of bulk performance (but it goes without saying, also at the cost single-thread performance). I mean, it's kinda why servers run at 2ish GHz and only desktops get to have 5 GHz. (yes, yes, there's that oddball IBM z server that did 5.0 too...)

[JEBjames]

Michael

Typo/missing word

Page 1

"TDP from 320 to Watts" I think you meant "TDP from 320 to 400 Watts"

[jeisom]

Honestly the difference between the 320w and 360w, I’d run them at 320. Over say 25 servers at 40 watts per processor would be about 2000 watts saved(potentially). These are intended for cloud services that would have racks of servers. That power savings would add up over time and they would still charge the same to clients.

[Anux]

This looks weird, normally with higher TDP you get less gains. But 360 -> 400 sees a lot more than 320 -> 360. Are there different fan settings at work? Sadly no temperatures.