Tag Archives: 2nd Gen AMD EPYC

VMware vSphere 7 Now Supports AMD SEV-ES Encryption!

VMware just announced that vSphere 7 Update 1 will add support for AMD SEV-ES encryption!

Find out what this means for enterprise security, and the future of AMD EPYC processors!

 

AMD SEV-ES Encryption : What Is It?

SEV-ES, short for Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Encrypted State, is a hardware-accelerated encryption capability in AMD EPYC processors.

Leveraging both the AMD Secure Processor and the AES-128 encryption engine built into every AMD EPYC processor, SEV-ES encrypts all CPU register contents when a virtual machine stops running.

This prevents the leakage of information from the CPU registers to components like the hypervisor. It can even detect malicious modifications to a CPU register state.

 

VMware vSphere 7 Now Supports AMD SEV-ES Encryption!

VMware vSphere 7 Update 1 adds support for both AMD SEV-ES and AMD EPYC processors.

The AMD Secure Processor in the first-generation EPYC processors can handle up to 15 encryption keys.

That increases to more than 500 encryption keys with the second-generation EPYC processors.

ESXi has many layers of isolation within its virtualised infrastructure, but all of that is implemented in software. They still require a level of trust in the hardware, which is where AMD SEV-ES comes in.

A guest operating system that supports SEV can ask the AMD Secure Processor to issue it an encryption key, for full in-memory, in-hardware encryption.

SEV-ES extends that protection to CPU registers, so that the data inside the CPU itself is encrypted. This protects the data from being read or modified when the virtual machine stops running.

Even a compromised hypervisor that accesses the register data cannot make use of it, because it is now encrypted.

Needless to say, adding support for AMD SEV-ES in vSphere 7 will spur the uptake of AMD EPYC processors in the datacenter.

 

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Google Cloud Confidential VM With 2nd Gen AMD EPYC!

Google recently introduced Confidential Computing, with Confidential VM as the first product, and it’s powered by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC!

Here’s an overview of Confidential Computing and Confidential VM, and how they leverage the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor!

 

Google Cloud Confidential Computing : What Is It?

Google Cloud encrypts customer data while it’s “at-rest” and “in-transit“. But that data must be decrypted because it can be processed.

Confidential Computing addresses that problem by encrypting data in-use – while it’s being processed. This ensures that data is kept encrypted while in memory and outside the CPU.

 

Google Cloud Confidential VM, Powered By 2nd Gen AMD EPYC

The first product that Google is unveiling under its Confidential Computing portfolio is Confidential VM, now in beta.

Confidential VM basically adds memory encryption to the existing suite of isolation and sandboxing techniques Google Cloud uses to keep their virtual machines secure and isolated.

This will help customers, especially those in regulated industries, to better protect sensitive data by further isolating their workloads in the cloud.

Google Cloud Confidential VM : Key Features

Powered By 2nd Gen AMD EPYC

Google Cloud Confidential VM runs on N2D series virtual machines powered by the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors.

It leverages the Secure Encrypted Virtualisation (SEV) feature in 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors to keep VM memory encrypted with a dedicated per-VM instance key.

These keys are generated and managed by the AMD Secure Processor inside the EPYC processor, during VM creation and reside only inside the VM – making them inaccessible to Google, or any other virtual machines running on the host.

Your data will stay encrypted while it’s being used, indexed, queried, or trained on. Encryption keys are generated in hardware, per virtual machine and are not exportable.

Confidential VM Performance

Google Cloud worked together with the AMD Cloud Solution team to minimise the performance impact of memory encryption on workloads.

They added support for new OSS drivers (name and gvnic) to handle storage traffic and network traffic with higher throughput than older protocols, thus ensuring that Confidential VM will perform almost as fast as non-confidential VM.

Easy Transition

According to Google, transitioning to Confidential VM is easy – all Google Cloud Platform (GCP) workloads can readily run as a Confidential VM whenever you want to.

Available OS Images

In addition to the hardware-based inline memory encryption, Google built Confidential VM on top of Shielded VM, to harden your OS image and verify the integrity of your firmware, kernel binaries and drivers.

Google currently offers images of Ubuntu v18.094, Ubuntu 20.04, Container Optimized OS (COS v81), and RHEL 8.2.

They are currently working with CentOS, Debian and other distributors to offer additional OS images for Confidential VM.

 

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AMD EPYC : Four Supercomputers In Top 50, Ten In Top 500!

AMD is on the roll, announcing more supercomputing wins for their 2nd Gen EPYC processors, including four supercomputers in the top 50 list, and ten in the top 500!

 

2nd Gen AMD EPYC : A Quick Primer

The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC family of server processors are based on the AMD Zen 2 microarchitecture and fabricated on the latest 7 nm process technology.

According to AMD, they offer up to 90% better integer performance and up to 79% better floating-point performance, than the competing Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processor. For more details :

Here is a quick 7.5 minute summary of the 2nd Gen EPYC product presentations by Dr. Lisa Su, Mark Papermaster and Forrest Norrod!

 

AMD EPYC : Four Supercomputers In Top 50, Ten In Top 500!

Thanks to the greatly improved performance of their 2nd Gen EPYC processors, they now power four supercomputers in the top 50 list :

Top 50 Rank Supercomputer Processor
7 Selene
NVIDIA DGX A100 SuperPOD
AMD EPYC 7742
30 Belenos
Atos BullSequana XH2000
AMD EPYC 7H12
34 Joilot-Curie
Atos BullSequana XH2000
AMD EPYC 7H12
48 Mahti
Atos BullSequana XH2000
AMD EPYC 7H12

On top of those four supercomputers, there are another six other supercomputers in the Top 500 ranking, powered by AMD EPYC.

In addition to powering supercomputers, AMD EPYC 7742 processors will soon power Gigabyte servers selected by CERN to handle data from their Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

 

3rd Gen AMD EPYC Supercomputers

AMD also announced that two universities will deploy Dell EMC PowerEdge servers powered by the upcoming 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors.

Indiana University

Indiana University will deploy Jetstream 2 – an eight-petaflop distributed cloud computing system, powered by the upcoming 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors.

Jetstream 2 will be used by researchers in a variety of fields like AI, social sciences and COVID-19 research.

Purdue University

Purdue University will deploy Anvil – a supercomputer powered by the upcoming 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, for use in a wide range of computational and data-intensive research.

AMD EPYC will also power Purdue University’s community cluster “Bell”, scheduled for deployment in the fall.

 

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Amazon EC2 C5a Now Runs On 2nd Gen AMD EPYC!

AMD and Amazon just introduced Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 C5a instances that run on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors, promising better performance at lower costs!

 

Amazon EC2 C5a Now Runs On 2nd Gen AMD EPYC!

The new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 C5a instances are powered by a 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor running at up to 3.3 GHz.

These C5a instances are designed to deliver the best possible price-performance value for compute-intensive workloads like batch processing, distributed analytics, data transformations, log analytics and web applications.

In the beginning, Amazon will offer these eight EC2 C5a instances, which will cost 10% less than comparable instances.

EC2 C5a
Instance
vCPUs RAM EBS-Optimised
Bandwidth
Network
Bandwidth
c5a.large 2 4 GiB Up to 3.710 Gbps Up to 10 Gbps
c5a.xlarge 4 8 GiB Up to 3.710 Gbps Up to 10 Gbps
c5a.2xlarge 8 16 GiB Up to 3.710 Gbps Up to 10 Gbps
c5a.4xlarge 16 32 GiB Up to 3.710 Gbps Up to 10 Gbps
c5a.8xlarge 32 64 GiB 3.710 Gbps 10 Gbps
c5a.12xlarge 48 96 GiB 4.750 Gbps 12 Gbps
c5a.16xlarge 64 128 GiB 6.3 Gbps 20 Gbps
c5a.24xlarge 96 192 GiB 9.5 Gbps 20 Gbps

These instances are fully 64-bit x86 compatible, and managed by the same Nitro platform used across Amazon EC2, with similar sizes as C5 instances, and the AMIs work on either.

They will eventually add disk variants like C5ad (with fast, local NVMe instance storage) and bare metal variants like C5an.metal and C5adn.metal.

 

Amazon EC2 C5a (2nd Gen AMD EPYC) Availability

The new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 C5a instances, powered by the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC, are available in these regions :

  • AWS US East : North Virginia, Ohio
  • AWS US West : Oregon
  • AWS Europe : Ireland, Frankfurt
  • AWS Asia Pacific : Sydney, Singapore

 

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AMD Datacenter Leadership In 2020 & Beyond!

AMD Senior VP and General Manager Forrest Norrod just shared AMD’s datacenter leadership with EPYC and Radeon Instinct, and AMD’s datacenter roadmap beyond 2020!

 

Forrest Norrod : Senior VP + GM, AMD Datacenter + Embedded Solutions Business Group

Forrest Norrod is senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group at AMD.

He is responsible for managing all aspects of strategy, business management, engineering and sales for AMD datacenter and embedded products.

Norrod has more than 25 years of technology industry experience across a number of engineering and business management roles at both the chip and system level.

 

AMD Datacenter Leadership In 2020 & Beyond!

During AMD Financial Analyst Day 2020, Forrest Norrod shared AMD’s datacenter leadership with EPYC and Radeon Instinct, and AMD’s datancenter roadmap in this presentation.

Here are the key points from Forrest Norrod’s presentation :

  • AMD won the contract to power the recently announced El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct GPUs.
  • Expected to come online in 2023, El Capitan is expected to deliver more than 2 exaFLOPs of double-precision performance, making it more powerful than today’s 200 fastest supercomputers combined.

  • AMD is continuing to gain traction with its 2nd Generation AMD EPYC processors in enterprise, cloud and HPC markets based on delivering performance leadership and TCO advantages across the most important enterprise and cloud workloads.
  • AMD EPYC is enabling Nokia to double the performance of their 5G Cloud Packet Core.
  • In 2020 AMD expects more than 150 AMD EPYC processor-powered cloud instances and 140 server platforms to be available.

  • AMD is introducing new technologies including AMD CDNA architecture, 3rd Generation Infinity Architecture and the ROCm 4.0 software platform, all of which will support the AMD-powered Frontier and El Capitan supercomputers.
  • AMD plans to ship the 3rd Gen AMD EPYC “Milan” processor in Late 2020, and it will provide 100% coverage of enterprise requirements – whether it’s for the cloud, HPC or enterprise IT.
  • Milan will remain on the 7 nm process, but the next-generation Genda core (Zen 4) will use the 5 nm process technology.

  • The AMD CDNA architecture will allow for better scalability, with accelerators fully interconnected with 2nd Gen Infinity Architecture.
  • But the next-generation AMD CDNA 2 architecture will allow for Unified Data, with CPU + GPU coherency with 3rd Gen Infinity Architecture – allowing for easier programming and improved performance.

 

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AMD EPYC 7002 Series Price + Specifications Compared!

AMD just introduced nineteen EPYC 7002 series processors, with 8 to 64 cores and up to 256 MB of L3 cache!

To make it easier for you to differentiate them, we compared their key specifications and prices.

 

AMD EPYC 7002 Series

Based on the AMD Zen 2 microarchitecture, the AMD EPYC 7002 series is the 2nd Gen EPYC family of server processors.

Built on the latest 7 nm process technology, AMD claims they will offer up to 90% better integer performance and up to 79% better floating-point performance, than the competing Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processor.

On top of significantly better performance per socket, they also come with hardware memory encryption, and a dedicated security processor.

For more information, read our article – 2nd Gen EPYC – Everything You Need To Know Summarised!

 

AMD EPYC 7002 Series Is Already Changing The Industry

AMD appeared to have shipped the EPYC 7002 series processors early to Google, where they were deployed in production servers for their internal datacenter infrastructure.

Google also plans to use the EPYC 7002 processors in new general-purpose machines that are part of the Google Cloud Compute Engine.

Twitter has also announced that they are already using the EPYC 7002 processors to reduce their datacenter TCO (total cost of ownership) by 25%.

For those who are looking to switch, HPE and Lenovo announced that they can provide datacenter solutions based on the EPYC 7002 processors.

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AMD EPYC 7002 Specifications + Price Compared!

For your convenience, we compared the specifications and prices of the AMD EPYC 7002 models!

64-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7742 64 / 128 2.25 GHz 3.4 GHz 256 MB 225 W $6,950
EPYC 7702 64 / 128 2.0 GHz 3.35 GHz 256 MB 200 W $6,450
EPYC 7702P 64 / 128 2.0 GHz 3.35 GHz 256 MB 200 W $4,425
48-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7642 48 / 96 2.3 GHz 3.3 GHz 256 MB 225 W $4,775
EPYC 7552 48 / 96 2.2 GHz 3.3 GHz 192 MB 200 W $4,025
32-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7542 32 / 64 2.9 GHz 3.4 GHz 128 MB 225 W $3,400
EPYC 7502 32 / 64 2.5 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $2,600
EPYC 7502P 32 / 64 2.5 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $2,300
EPYC 7452 32 / 64 2.35 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 155 W $2,205
24-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7402 24 / 48 2.8 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $1,783
EPYC 7402P 24 / 48 2.8 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $1,250
EPYC 7352 24 / 48 2.3 GHz 3.2 GHz 128 MB 155 W $1,350
16-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7302 16 / 32 3.0 GHz 3.3 GHz 128 MB 155 W $978
EPYC 7302P 16 / 32 3.0 GHz 3.3 GHz 128 MB 155 W $825
EPYC 7282 16 / 32 2.8 GHz 3.2 GHz 64 MB 120 W $650
12-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7272 12 / 24 2.9 GHz 3.2 GHz 64 MB 120 W $625
12-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7262 8 / 16 3.2 GHz 3.4 GHz 128 MB 155 W $575
EPYC 7252 8 / 16 3.1 GHz 3.2 GHz 64 MB 120 W $475
EPYC 7232P 8 / 16 3.1 GHz 3.2 GHz 32 MB 120 W $450

 

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2nd Gen EPYC – Everything You Need To Know Summarised!

Leveraging their new Zen 2 microarchitecture and 7 nm process technology, AMD just introduced their 2nd Gen EPYC processors.

Designed to challenge Intel Xeon in the enterprise, cloud and HPC markets, the 2nd Gen EPYC processors promise to deliver “record-setting performance“, while reducing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) by up to 50%.

Here is everything you need to know about the new 2nd Gen EPYC processors… summarised!

 

The Official 2nd Gen EPYC Product Presentation Summary

Let’s start with a quick 7.5 minute summary of the 2nd Gen EPYC product presentations by Dr. Lisa Su, Mark Papermaster and Forrest Norrod!

Now, let’s take a look at its key features and specifications!

AMD Infinity Architecture Explained

The AMD Infinity Architecture is a fancy name for their new modular chiplet-based design. It allows them to combine up to eight processor dies with a single I/O die on the same package, faster and at lower cost.

The processor dies are fabricated with the industry-leading 7 nm process technology for best performance at lowest power consumption, and thermal output.

The I/O die, on the other hand, can be fabricated on the much cheaper 14 nm process technology, with a much higher yield.

2nd Gen EPYC Is Built On 7nm

The 2nd Gen EPYC processor cores are fabricated on the 7nm process technology. This allows AMD to fit more transistors into a smaller space.

By doubling the transistor density, coupled with microarchitectural optimisations, the 2nd Gen EPYC delivers 4X the floating point performance of the 1st Gen EPYC processors.

The smaller process also increases energy efficiency, reducing both power consumption and heat output. According to AMD, 2nd Gen EPYC will use half the power consumption as the 1st Gen EPYC at the same performance level.

Industry-Leading Performance

AMD claims they will offer up to 90% better integer performance and up to 79% better floating-point performance, than the competing Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processor.

On top of significantly better performance per socket, they also come with hardware memory encryption, and a dedicated security processor.

Baked-In Security On Multiple Levels

The 2nd Gen EPYC processors are built-in with multiple levels of security features, to harden it against cyberattacks.

  • They have a secure root of trust designed to validate the initial BIOS boot without corruption.
    In virtualised environments, you can use it to cryptographically check that your entire software stack is booted without corruption.
  • They have memory encryption engines built into their memory channels to hardware-encrypt data in the memory, preventing cold boot attacks.
  • In the 2nd Gen EPYC, every virtual machine is now encrypted with one of up to 509 unique encryption keys known only to the processor.
    This protects your data even if a malicious VM finds its way into your virtual machine memory, or if a compromised hypervisor gains access into a guest VM.

2nd Gen EPYC Is PCI Express Gen 4 Ready!

Like the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, the 2nd Gen EPYC is PCI Express Gen 4 ready.

PCIe 4.0 doubles the bandwidth over PCIe 3.0, and every EPYC processor has 128 lanes to tie together HPC clusters, or connect to GPU accelerators and NVMe drives.

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2nd Gen EPYC Model, Specifications + Price Summary

For your convenience, we summarised the specifications and prices of the 2nd Gen EPYC models!

64-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7742 64 / 128 2.25 GHz 3.4 GHz 256 MB 225 W $6,950
EPYC 7702 64 / 128 2.0 GHz 3.35 GHz 256 MB 200 W $6,450
EPYC 7702P 64 / 128 2.0 GHz 3.35 GHz 256 MB 200 W $4,425
48-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7642 48 / 96 2.3 GHz 3.3 GHz 256 MB 225 W $4,775
EPYC 7552 48 / 96 2.2 GHz 3.3 GHz 192 MB 200 W $4,025
32-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7542 32 / 64 2.9 GHz 3.4 GHz 128 MB 225 W $3,400
EPYC 7502 32 / 64 2.5 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $2,600
EPYC 7502P 32 / 64 2.5 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $2,300
EPYC 7452 32 / 64 2.35 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 155 W $2,205
24-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7402 24 / 48 2.8 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $1,783
EPYC 7402P 24 / 48 2.8 GHz 3.35 GHz 128 MB 180 W $1,250
EPYC 7352 24 / 48 2.3 GHz 3.2 GHz 128 MB 155 W $1,350
16-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7302 16 / 32 3.0 GHz 3.3 GHz 128 MB 155 W $978
EPYC 7302P 16 / 32 3.0 GHz 3.3 GHz 128 MB 155 W $825
EPYC 7282 16 / 32 2.8 GHz 3.2 GHz 64 MB 120 W $650
12-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7272 12 / 24 2.9 GHz 3.2 GHz 64 MB 120 W $625
12-Core Models Cores /
Threads
Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP 1K Price
EPYC 7262 8 / 16 3.2 GHz 3.4 GHz 128 MB 155 W $575
EPYC 7252 8 / 16 3.1 GHz 3.2 GHz 64 MB 120 W $475
EPYC 7232P 8 / 16 3.1 GHz 3.2 GHz 32 MB 120 W $450

 

2nd Gen EPYC Is Already Changing The Industry

AMD appeared to have shipped the 2nd Gen EPYC processors early to Google, where they were deployed in production servers for their internal datacenter infrastructure.

Google also plans to use the 2nd Gen EPYC processors in new general-purpose machines that are part of the Google Cloud Compute Engine.

Twitter has also announced that they are already using the 2nd Gen EPYC processors to reduce their datacenter TCO (total cost of ownership) by 25%.

 

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