AMD preps for data centre return with 32-core Naples

Article By : AMD

Naples, which will ship in Q2, packs 32 dual-threaded cores, eight memory channels running up to 2,400MHz and 128 lanes of PCI Express Gen 3.

Advanced Micro Devices is set to roll out the first server processor based on its Zen x86 core at the Open Compute Summit in California.

The Naples processor, which will ship in the second quarter of 2017, packs 32 dual-threaded cores, eight memory channels running up to 2,400MHz and 128 lanes of PCI Express Gen 3.

__Figure 1:__ *Naples offers on critical parameters, with 45% more cores, 60% more input/output capacity (I/O) and 122% more memory bandwidth. (Source: AMD)*

AMD said its server processor packs more cores, memory, and I/O than Intel’s Broadwell, beating it in seismic analysis benchmarks. Naples includes up to 32 CPU cores versus the Xeon E5-2699A v4 processor with 22 CPU cores. It also supports up to 21.3GB/s per channel with DDR4-2667 x 8 channels (total 170.7GB/s), while the Xeon E5-2699A v4 processor supports 19.2GB/s with max DDR4-2400 x 4 channels (total 76.8GB/s). Naples also offers up to 64 PCI Express high speed I/O lanes per socket, versus the Xeon E5-2699A v4 processor at 40 lanes per socket, according to AMD.

__Figure 2:__ *Naples vs. Intel server (Source: AMD)*

In an interview with EE Times' Rick Merritt, AMD senior VP and GM for server and semi-custom group Forrest Norrod noted that the company has negligible market share in x86 server CPUs today.

“We will fire rifle shots, not shotgun blasts. We have a good general-purpose product, but our strategy is to identify workloads for which we are clearly best,” Norrod said, including workloads in both public and private cloud computing.

He noted that even the web giants at the OC event, such as Google, have many different workloads, such as search indexing, serving up search results, and serving adds. “Some of those workloads, I’m not going to break in,” Norrod said.