Enterprise
Since the announcement of AMD’s Zen 3 core microarchitecture, we’ve been expecting three series of products to be announced: desktop Ryzen, mobile Ryzen, and enterprise EPYC. So far the desktop parts are now launched and at retail (if you can find them), and the mobile Ryzen processors are part of AMD’s CES disclosures this week for retail in February. That only leaves Zen 3-based EPYC, which AMD has decided to preview as part of its CES keynote presentation today. As far as the design of Zen 3 EPYC ‘Milan’ processors go, we are expecting an almost seemless transition from the previous Zen 2 EPYC ‘Rome’ ecosystem, with pin-compatible processors offering up to 64 cores and with 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes. For performance, if the desktop...
Best CPUs for Workstations: December 2020
Sometimes choosing a CPU is hard. So we've got you covered. In our CPU Guides, we give you our pick of some of the best processors available, supplying data...
17 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 12/1/2020Marvell Announces 112G SerDes, Built on TSMC 5nm
So far we have three products in the market built on TSMC’s N5 process: the Huawei Kirin 9000 5G SoC, found in the Mate 40 Pro, the Apple A14...
15 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 11/17/2020Marvell and HPE Introduce NVMe RAID Adapter for Server Boot Drives
In 2018 Marvell announced the 88NR2241 Intelligent NVMe Switch: the first—and so far, only—NVMe hardware RAID controller of its kind. Now that chip has scored its first major (public...
29 by Billy Tallis on 10/6/2020NUVIA Completes Series B Funding Round: $240M
One of the more interesting startups of late is NUVIA, with promises of a new Arm-based processor for the datacenter to rival the x86 dominance of AMD and Intel...
21 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 9/24/2020Marvell Refocuses Thunder Server Platforms Towards Custom Silicon Business
Yesterday during Marvell’s quarterly earnings call, the company had made a surprise announcement that they are planning to restructure their server processor development team towards fully custom solutions, abandoning...
42 by Andrei Frumusanu on 8/28/2020Intel Xe-HP Graphics: Early Samples Offer 42+ TFLOPs of FP32 Performance
One of the promises that Intel has made with its new Xe GPU family is that in its various forms it will cater to uses ranging from integrated graphics...
43 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/21/2020Intel’s SG1 is 4x DG1: Xe-LP Graphics for Server Video Acceleration and Streaming
For the last few years, Intel has had a product line known as the Visual Computing Accelerator (VCA). With the VCA2 product being put on EOL earlier this year...
9 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/21/2020Hot Chips 2020: Marvell Details ThunderX3 CPUs - Up to 60 Cores Per Die, 96 Dual-Die in 2021
Today as part of HotChips 2020 we saw Marvell finally reveal some details on the microarchitecture of their new ThunderX3 server CPUs and core microarchitectures. The company had announced...
27 by Andrei Frumusanu on 8/17/2020NUVIA Phoenix Targets +40-50% ST Performance Over Zen 2 for Only 33% the Power
In November 2019, the company NUVIA broke out of stealth mode. Founded by former senior Apple and Google processor architects, John Bruno, Manu Gulati and Gerard Williams III, the...
50 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/11/2020GIGABYTE Updates 4-GPU 2U G242 Server with Rome and PCIe4 for Ampere
As we wait for the big server juggernaut to support PCIe 4.0, a number of OEMs are busy creating AMD EPYC versions to fill that demand for high-speed connectivity...
14 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/6/2020Ampere Altra 1P Server Pictured: GIGABYTE’s 2U with 80 Arm N1 Cores, PCIe 4.0 and CCIX
With the news of Apple moving to Arm SoCs replacing Intel in a few key products, and the success of the new Graviton2 SoC in Amazon’s Web Services, the...
11 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/3/2020Xeon Platinum 9200 at Scale: Penguin Computing’s new 7616 Cores-Per-Rack Solution
Some aspects of computing rely on density, and need to pack as many compute processing elements in the smallest space possible. Intel’s Xeon Platinum 9200 range was created to...
14 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 8/3/2020Marvell Unveils its Comprehensive Custom ASIC Offering
Last week Marvell had updated us with an overview of the company’s new more extensive and comprehensive custom ASIC offerings, detailing the company’s design abilities gained through the company's...
6 by Andrei Frumusanu on 7/27/2020HPC Systems Special Offer: Two A64FX Nodes in a 2U for $40k
It was recently announced that the Fugaku supercomputer, located at Riken in Japan, has scored the #1 position on the TOP500 supercomputer list, as well as #1 positions in...
38 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/26/2020Ampere’s Product List: 80 Cores, up to 3.3 GHz at 250 W; 128 Core in Q4
With the advent of higher performance Arm based cloud computing, a lot of focus is being put on what the various competitors can do in this space. We’ve covered...
18 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/23/2020GIGABYTE’s 4U 10x NVIDIA A100 New G492 Servers Announced
One of the interesting elements about NVIDIA’s A100 card is the potential compute density offered, especially for AI applications. There is set to be a strong rush to enable...
16 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/22/2020Intel Launches Cooper Lake: 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable for 4P/8P Servers
We’ve known about Intel’s Cooper Lake platform for a number of quarters. What was initially planned, as far as we understand, as a custom silicon variant of Cascade Lake...
101 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/18/2020Cerebras’ Wafer Scale Engine Scores a Sale: $5m Buys Two for the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
One of the highlights of Hot Chips 2019 was the presentation of the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine - an AI processor chip that was as big as a wafer...
12 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/9/2020AMD’s New EPYC 7F52 Reviewed: The F is for ᴴᴵᴳᴴ Frequency
Everyone wants a fast processor. The ability to get more stuff done is one of a number of guiding principles of business. However, business also needs consistency, safety and...
101 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 4/14/2020