AMD's EPYC Bergamo CPUs break official ground today, offering up to 128 Zen 4C cores to cloud and data center servers. The Bergamo chips are designed to offer higher density in an efficient chip package.
AMD's EPYC Bergamo Official, Delivering Up To 128 Zen 4C Cores To Cloud-Native Servers & Data Center Platforms
The AMD EPYC Bergamo CPUs are the first products to feature a brand new iteration of Zen cores known as the "C" series which are density optimized. Bergamo being the first is featuring the latest Zen 4C cores which offer double the core count of a traditional Zen 4 die and are designed purely for density-optimized servers where the most amount of cores are required. With Genoa, the red team offered up to 96 cores but with Bergamo, AMD will be offering up to 128 cores with half the die area. Some of the features of Bergamo include:
- Up To 128 Zen 4C Cores
- Consistent x86 ISA
- 82 Billion Transistors
- Greatest vCPU Density
- Best Energy Efficiency
- 35% Smaller Core Die Area With Same Process
- Up To 2.6x Faster Than Sapphire Rapids In Cloud-Native Workloads
The main competition of AMD's EPYC Bergamo is the various Arm & compute-density optimized chips coming from Intel such as Sierra Forest which is going to feature up to 144 E-Cores. Intel's solution won't be out till the first half of 2024 and that is if everything goes according to plan for Intel 4 (process node). This will also be targeted as the competitor to NVIDIA's Grace which relies purely on Arm cores and among a dozen of other Arm-based chips that are becoming a common household in major tech data centers.
So what we already know about AMD's EPYC Bergamo CPUs is that they will feature up to 128 cores based on the Zen 4C cores which are fabricated on TSMC's 5nm process node which can be seen as a slight improvement over the 5nm process node which powers the Zen 4 cores at the moment. It's going to offer up to 256 threads so multi-threading is there whereas that's not the case with Intel's E-Cores, it supports 12-channel DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen 5.0 functionality, & is drop-in compatible with the existing SP5 socket with no software port required since the same Zen 4 ISA is used.
The Bergamo chips make use of eight Zen 4C CCDs which include up to 16 Zen 4C cores. Each CCD comprises two CCX's which feature 8 cores each and each CCX has a shared 16 MB L3 cache. So we are seeing the return of the dual-CCX portioning for Zen 4C versus the singular unified CCD/CCX we have seen since Zen 3.
AMD managed to fit twice the number of cores and threads with the same L3 cache within a die size that's under 10% bigger than the Zen 4 CCD (72.7mm2 vs 66.3mm2). The Zen 4C CCD which is codenamed "Dinoysus" has an overall -35.4% lower core area and almost every aspect of the CCD has been reduced by -35% to -45%. The full Bergamo chips pack a total of 82 billion transistors on the package. Even when comparing the core sizes, the Zen 4C core measures just 2.48mm2 while the Zen 4 core measures 3.84mm2, and both are based on the same TSMC 5nm process node.
- Zen 4 Core Area: 3.84mm2 @ 5nm
- Zen 4C Core Area: 2.48mm2 @ 5nm
- Zen 4 CCD Area: 66.3mm2
- Zen 4C CCD Area: 72.7mm2
Considering that AMD used an 8 CCD package for its EPYC Bergamo CPUs, it might be possible that a 12 CCD package could've been tested or may have been kept in wraps for a future release. This can offer up to 192 cores and 384 threads which will be something to boast about but considering that Intel is not getting close to 192 cores this early, it might be better to just wait and release it a better time. AMD has said that Bergamo is shipping to customers now in volume.
In terms of performance, AMD compared the EPYC 9754 "Bergamo" CPU against the Intel Xeon Platinum 8490H CPU in a variety of Cloud-Native workloads which showcased up to a 2.6x gain in terms of performance. Further expanding on the performance gains, AMD showed that Bergamo servers offer 2.1x container density and up to 2x the performance per watt in overall server-side Java workloads.
Overall, AMD's position in the dense cloud market will be solidified with its Zen 4C and future Zen 5C/6C cores which are expected to launch in the coming years. Meta has also announced that it's going to use Bergamo to further offer higher performance for its customers.
source https://wccftech.com/amd-epyc-bergamo-cpus-deliver-up-to-128-zen-4c-cores-cloud-data-centers-up-to-2-6x-faster-than-sapphire-rapids/