AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" Performance On Ubuntu Linux Six Months After Launch

It's been a half-year already since AMD introduced the EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors that continue performing well and gaining marketshare. While the recently released Ubuntu 21.10 is not a long-term support (LTS) release, for those wondering what this latest Linux distribution means for EPYC 7003 series performance, here is a look at its performance across many benchmarks against that of Ubuntu 21.04 that was released right after the Milan launch and then Ubuntu 20.04 as the current LTS stable series.

Basically what is being looked at today is the performance from the same AMD EPYC 74F3 ASRockRack server when testing:

- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server as the current long-term stable release used in the enterprise. Ubuntu Server 20.04.3 LTS sticks to using the original Linux 5.4 kernel and other non-HWE packages by default.

- Ubuntu 21.04 as the non-LTS release that debuted shortly after the EPYC Milan launch.

- Ubuntu 21.10 as the recently released non-LTS Linux distribution for those wondering the current out-of-the-box performance for AMD EPYC servers on this release, which is also now just six months before Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

- Ubuntu 21.10 with upgrading to Linux 5.15 Git for the very latest kernel version nearing its official release in the coming weeks.

So with that is a look at how the Linux performance has evolved since launch for the AMD EPYC 7003 series in going from Ubuntu 21.04 to 21.10 and more broadly how the latest performance is compared to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, if the LTS designation isn't important to you or simply curious about the gains on the table when moving closer to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

This round of Ubuntu Linux benchmarking was carried out on an ASRockRack ROME2D16-2T currently being reviewed at Phoronix with an AMD EPYC 74F3 24-core frequency-optimized Zen 3 server processor with 8 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory. The only changes being made between runs were a clean install of Ubuntu Linux each time and then with the final run also upgrading to Linux 5.15 Git with the operating system each time otherwise being left at its defaults.