AMD’s New 280W 64-Core Rome CPU: The EPYC 7H12
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 18, 2019 9:15 AM EST
If there’s something that gets everyone excited, it is more performance. On the Enterprise side, AMD has made big strides with its latest EPYC processor stack, featuring up to 64 cores per socket with 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes and 8-channel memory, featuring a very high performance per dollar in the marketplace. In order to coincide with the launch of the processor line-up in Europe today, AMD is unveiling a new chip to act as the new Halo product: the EPYC 7H12.
The new processor features a higher base frequency and a higher boost frequency that the previous top-of-the-line processor, the EPYC 7742. The new EPYC 7H12 has a rated TDP of 280W, and as a result the chip is being marketed for server environments that offer liquid cooled solutions only. AMD is very specific about this, especially in the market for which this CPU is aimed at. One of AMD’s main partners, Atos, is set to offer an 1U solution featuring eight of these CPUs, all liquid cooled.
| AMD EPYC 7002 Processors (2P) | ||||||
| Cores Threads |
Frequency (GHz) | L3* | TDP | Price | ||
| Base | Max | |||||
| EPYC 7H12 | 64 / 128 | 2.60 | 3.30 | 256 MB | 280 W | ? |
| EPYC 7742 | 64 / 128 | 2.25 | 3.40 | 256 MB | 225 W | $6950 |
| EPYC 7702 | 64 / 128 | 2.00 | 3.35 | 256 MB | 200 W | $6450 |
| EPYC 7642 | 48 / 96 | 2.30 | 3.20 | 256 MB | 225 W | $4775 |
| EPYC 7552 | 48 / 96 | 2.20 | 3.30 | 192 MB | 200 W | $4025 |
For a base frequency, the EPYC 7H12 will be set at 2.6 GHz, and a turbo frequency of 3.3 GHz. Compared to the EPYC 7742, that’s +350 MHz on base and -100 MHz on turbo, for an increase in +55W TDP. The higher TDP means the 7H12 is expected to have an all-core turbo a lot higher than the 7742. The EPYC 7H12 is socket compatible with all other Rome processors.
With this new CPU, AMD is clearly going after the high-performance compute market. The chip still affords the same specifications as the rest of the stack, such as the PCIe lanes, the memory support, and security features, should any other market be interested, but AMD expects this CPU to be installed in large HPC datacenters. AMD published raw LINPACK metrics with a performance uplift of the 7H12 over the 7742 at around 11%.
We asked AMD if this is a chip designed for specific partners who can enable liquid cooling servers, or for any OEM that wants it. AMD responded stating the latter – this chip will have general availability, but given the target market, they are pushing it only for liquid cooled HPC systems. AMD states they have other processors better suited to certain other fields, such as finance.
We expect AMD’s OEM partners to be evaluating the 7H12 for their system offerings, with further announcements in due course.
Related Reading
- AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked
- The AMD 2nd Gen EPYC "Rome" Launch Live Blog
- Lenovo Launches ThinkSystem SR635 & SR655 Servers with AMD’s EPYC ‘Rome’ CPUs
- AMD Zen 2 Microarchitecture Analysis: Ryzen 3000 and EPYC Rome
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Freeb!rd - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
TDPs are a funny thing and even more complex with the new 7nm chiplet CPUs with more sensors and logic to control boost frequencies.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13124/the-amd-threa...
thomasg - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
The 3.4 GHz boost clock will be only available for some cores.The 7H12 will likely boost many more cores, even if not that high.
Thus singlethreaded-performance (which nobody cares about in that segment) will be slightly worse, but multithreaded-performance a lot better.
The reason for lowering the maximum clock might be to make sure that as many cores as possible can run at maximum clockspeed, which they might not, were it higher.
peevee - Thursday, September 19, 2019 - link
As long as you consider "up to 11%" a lot.Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
And a peak CPU power consumption of over 94kW in a 42U rack is also impressive (280w x 8 CPU per 1U x 42U). With memory and peripherals and PSU losses the total peak rack power will probably exceed 120kW.peevee - Thursday, September 19, 2019 - link
Hard to believe, sorry. And the claim is only about 32 blades per rack (you need power, cooling, routing...), and I don't see 8 CPU/U anywhere... With 8ch of RAM/CPU it is not going to fit.phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
It's listed right in the article that the OEM in question has a 1U blade that will support 8 CPUs, with 32 blades per rack.phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
Last sentence of the second paragraph:"One of AMD’s main partners, Atos, is set to offer an 1U solution featuring eight of these CPUs, all liquid cooled."
Gondalf - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
No increase in turbo clock speed......very strange thing indeed. ST performace stay +20% worse than Intel offering. This is a limiting factor that shrink severely the number of customers interested in the SKU. I suspect they utilized a manufacturing process pretty similar to the SOC process for phones, all this to lower the thermals and fit 64 cores in only 225W at the expense of the responsiveness of the SKUs to the demand of tasks.This the reason right now Xeon is selling like donuts. All the Epyc 2 server line is without common sense up to 32 cores, only the 64 cores SKUs is intersting for some applications.
vanilla_gorilla - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
You're far too focused on single threaded performance on a server CPU. These are designed to be deployed by the hundreds for massively parallel workloads. What matters is total throughput.FunBunny2 - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
"by the hundreds for massively parallel workloads"outside of weather and nucular bombs, I doubt that there are more than a dozen of such workloads. be careful: multitasking and multiprocessing does not equal parallel. the former two were implemented in the early 60s in the mainframe world.