AMD EPYC 7003 Series Performance Across Autumn 2021 Linux Distributions

Recently I ran benchmarks showing how Ubuntu 21.10 performance has improved for AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" even compared to just six months ago with Ubuntu 21.04. In this article is a broader look at AMD EPYC Milan on the autumn 2021 Linux distributions with firing up not only Ubuntu 21.10 but Fedora Server 35, Clear Linux 35150, CentOS Stream, and AlmaLinux 8.4 as other common alternatives in the Linux server space.

These five Linux distributions were benchmarked on the same EPYC server comprised of two AMD EPYC 75F3 processors for a combined 64 cores / 128 threads, an ASRockRack ROME2D16-2T motherboard, 16 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, and a 1TB WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe solid-state drive.

The five Linux distributions under test was Alma Linux 8.4 (RHEL 8.4 alternative), CentOS Stream for tracking the latest upstream work ahead of RHEL 9, Clear Linux 35150 for Intel's latest optimized Linux distribution, Fedora Server 35, and then Ubuntu 21.10. Each of the five Linux distributions were cleanly installed on this server and benchmarking them in their out-of-the-box / default configuration for seeing how these latest Linux distributions compete on the current-generation AMD server platform.