AMD has launched the AMD EPYC 8004 “Siena” processors for “intelligent edge” servers, according to Phoronix. These processors offer a lower price point while maximizing power efficiency and expanding EPYC’s deployment outside of data centers. The Siena processors have up to 64 cores / 128 threads per socket, support up to six channels of DDR5 memory, and are designed for edge computing and telco markets. They use the new “SP6” socket and have a range of TDPs from 70 Watts to 225 Watts. The EPYC 8004 series consists of P and PN parts, with PN parts being NEBS friendly. The pricing ranges from $409 to $5450 USD. The performance and power efficiency of the EPYC 8004 series are competitive against Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” processors. The processors offer the same ISA features as Genoa (-X) and Bergamo, including AVX-512, and support SMT. Overall, the EPYC 8004 series processors are complementary to Genoa (-X) and Bergamo, filling the gap between them and Ryzen for budget-minded and SOHO/SMB server deployments.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that early testing of the Linux 6.6 kernel shows impressive gains for AMD’s high core count server processors, particularly the EPYC 9754 “Bergamo.” The new Linux 6.6 kernel features the Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First (EEVDF) scheduler, which is a major improvement over the existing Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS). The EEVDF scheduler has shown to help with latency sensitive tasks and has led to a lot of CFS code being removed. Additionally, the Linux 6.6 workqueue improvements benefit AMD CPUs and other chiplet-based CPUs with multiple L3 caches. In testing, Linux 6.6 has shown dramatic improvements on higher core count processors like the AMD EPYC 9754.

The article discusses the testing of the Linux 6.6 kernel on an AMD EPYC 9754 server configuration with 128 cores and 256 threads per socket. The benchmarks were carried out using Linux 6.5.1 stable and then with Linux 6.6-rc1. The results showed significant performance improvements with the Linux 6.6 kernel.

Source: Phoronix.