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What really matters (for people that do the CAPEX and OPEX math on their assets; not gamers) is the performance/power ratio. Without this I don't see AMD eating

What really matters (for people that do the CAPEX and OPEX math on their assets; not gamers) is the performance/power ratio. Without this I don't see AMD eating much of Intel's lunch (35B vs 208B market cap).

Scaevolus 7y ago
AWS and Azure have had EPYC instances available for a while, so the math (presumably) works out for cloud operators.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  AWS also has aarch64 instances (we use them for CI and simulations at my day job). It’s starting to look like Intel’s days are numbered.
vondur 7y ago
The Core i9-9980XE pulls from 199W->245W depending on the workload and AVX instructions being used under stock settings. The Ryzen is listed as a 105W part, although when overclocked, I'm sure it will pull more than that. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cpu,5902-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cp...
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  That means that the Ryzen part can pull ninety-four more watts- and basically double its TDP and still go under what the i9-9980XE will draw. There also seem to be some new X570 motherboards that will actually support this level of craziness, too.
tmd83 7y ago
I guess you are not aware that at this point everything suggest that the upcoming AMD 7nm processors are significantly more efficient that similar performance intel processor. The Ryzen processor is 105w vs. the significantly slower intel processor is 165w. Additionally also AMD's TDP numbers are much more accurate in terms of real peak usage than intel. So almost certainly Zen 2 processor will have a much better performance/power ratio than corresponding intel one moving forward. That was definitely not the case for AMD in their last generation.
sbov 7y ago
The Zen 2 16 core chip is 105 watt TDP. The chips its wiping the floor with are 165 TDP. TDP doesn't necessarily correlate with real world usage, but benchmarks show that AMD is much better at their chips running closer to TDP than Intel chips are, so the gap is probably actually wider. The strength of Intel chips is being able to pump a lot of power through them to hit higher clock rates. It sounds like you're saying performance/power is a benefit for Intel, possibly based upon the history of AMD chips, but that line of thought has been wrong since the Ryzen architecture.
- tmd83 7y ago
  I think even on 1st gen Zen processor intel had performance/watt advantage though the gap was lower. It's Zen 2 that has completely obliterated intel in performance/watt. Which is almost a bigger shock than the AMD taking the performance crown. Taking both the performance and efficiency crown in a single generation specially when it's not even a full new generation is beyond impressive. Of course it was only feasible with the foundation build up by Zen 1 but it's still very encouraging after the major stagnation that was there in desktop processor for a long while.
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    This is good to know. Are there any reputable benchmarks that show those advantages? Something like FLOPS/watt on some LAPACK or Tensorflow test, or amount of joules to compile the Linux kernel, or anything of this sort?
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    It's going to depend heavily on which specific CPU you're talking about and which specific workload, but at least on Handbrake the Ryzen 2700 was the performance/watt king per legitreviews: https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performance-per-watt.png https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performa... Maybe Intel took that back with their lower clocked 8c/16t chips, dunno, this isn't something that comes up all that much in consumer reviews. But there's at least not a significant gap in either direction, it's pretty much a wash. On the server side of things Anandtech didn't seem to go much into it but at least with this one: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/22 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd... The dual EPYC 7601 used 100w less than the Xeon competition in povray while also being the fastest system by a substantial margin at povray, too. Which would put performance, power, and performance/watt all firmly in the EPYC 7601's domain on that one test. And Intel took it back on MySQL. So 50/50 split.
nolok 7y ago
AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Intel is currently getting absolutely destroyed on that front.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  > AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Both AMD & Intel list TDP for all cores used at base clock frequencies. The major difference is Intel heavily leverages what they call all-core boost to never actually run at their base clock, allowing them to list rather ridiculously low base clock frequencies. For example the i9-9900K's base frequency is listed at 3.6ghz, but the all-core turbo frequency is a whopping 4.7ghz. That difference is how you end up with a CPU that expects a whopping 210W of sustained power delivery (the 9900K's PL2 spec) even though its TDP is only 95W. AMD doesn't (didn't?) have an all-core boost concept, so their base clocks are just higher, making their TDP number closer to real-world. But still technically base-clock numbers and not boost numbers, and so you will still see power draw in excess of TDP.
mtgx 7y ago
In that case, Intel should be in big trouble, because the advertised TDP seems to be less than half the power required to reach the chips' advertised performance: > In this case, for the new 9th Generation Core processors, Intel has set the PL2 value to 210W. This is essentially the power required to hit the peak turbo on all cores, such as 4.7 GHz on the eight-core Core i9-9900K. So users can completely forget the 95W TDP when it comes to cooling. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/21 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9... In other words 1) Intel's advertised "TDP" = true? (they don't use the same original meaning of the "Total Design Power" anymore) 2) Intel's advertised peak performance = true (with caveats such as all the mitigations required for the CPU flaws, which lower performance) 3) Intel's advertised peak performance at advertised TDP = BIG FAT LIE
tracker1 7y ago
The difference in power is not enough to offset the price/performance differences. AMD is actually on par or better than Intel with Zen 2 anyway.

Scaevolus 7y ago

AWS and Azure have had EPYC instances available for a while, so the math (presumably) works out for cloud operators.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago
AWS also has aarch64 instances (we use them for CI and simulations at my day job). It’s starting to look like Intel’s days are numbered.

vondur 7y ago

The Core i9-9980XE pulls from 199W->245W depending on the workload and AVX instructions being used under stock settings. The Ryzen is listed as a 105W part, although when overclocked, I'm sure it will pull more than that. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cpu,5902-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9980xe-cp...

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
That means that the Ryzen part can pull ninety-four more watts- and basically double its TDP and still go under what the i9-9980XE will draw. There also seem to be some new X570 motherboards that will actually support this level of craziness, too.

tmd83 7y ago

I guess you are not aware that at this point everything suggest that the upcoming AMD 7nm processors are significantly more efficient that similar performance intel processor. The Ryzen processor is 105w vs. the significantly slower intel processor is 165w. Additionally also AMD's TDP numbers are much more accurate in terms of real peak usage than intel. So almost certainly Zen 2 processor will have a much better performance/power ratio than corresponding intel one moving forward. That was definitely not the case for AMD in their last generation.

sbov 7y ago

The Zen 2 16 core chip is 105 watt TDP. The chips its wiping the floor with are 165 TDP. TDP doesn't necessarily correlate with real world usage, but benchmarks show that AMD is much better at their chips running closer to TDP than Intel chips are, so the gap is probably actually wider. The strength of Intel chips is being able to pump a lot of power through them to hit higher clock rates. It sounds like you're saying performance/power is a benefit for Intel, possibly based upon the history of AMD chips, but that line of thought has been wrong since the Ryzen architecture.

tmd83 7y ago
I think even on 1st gen Zen processor intel had performance/watt advantage though the gap was lower. It's Zen 2 that has completely obliterated intel in performance/watt. Which is almost a bigger shock than the AMD taking the performance crown. Taking both the performance and efficiency crown in a single generation specially when it's not even a full new generation is beyond impressive. Of course it was only feasible with the foundation build up by Zen 1 but it's still very encouraging after the major stagnation that was there in desktop processor for a long while.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  This is good to know. Are there any reputable benchmarks that show those advantages? Something like FLOPS/watt on some LAPACK or Tensorflow test, or amount of joules to compile the Linux kernel, or anything of this sort?
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  It's going to depend heavily on which specific CPU you're talking about and which specific workload, but at least on Handbrake the Ryzen 2700 was the performance/watt king per legitreviews: https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performance-per-watt.png https://legitreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/performa... Maybe Intel took that back with their lower clocked 8c/16t chips, dunno, this isn't something that comes up all that much in consumer reviews. But there's at least not a significant gap in either direction, it's pretty much a wash. On the server side of things Anandtech didn't seem to go much into it but at least with this one: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd-epyc-7000-cpu-battle-of-the-decade/22 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake-ep-vs-amd... The dual EPYC 7601 used 100w less than the Xeon competition in povray while also being the fastest system by a substantial margin at povray, too. Which would put performance, power, and performance/watt all firmly in the EPYC 7601's domain on that one test. And Intel took it back on MySQL. So 50/50 split.

nolok 7y ago

AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Intel is currently getting absolutely destroyed on that front.

kllrnohj 7y ago
> AMD chip at 105w (and AMD give real tdp), while the Intel chip is at 185w (and Intel give tdp in non turbo mode). Both AMD & Intel list TDP for all cores used at base clock frequencies. The major difference is Intel heavily leverages what they call all-core boost to never actually run at their base clock, allowing them to list rather ridiculously low base clock frequencies. For example the i9-9900K's base frequency is listed at 3.6ghz, but the all-core turbo frequency is a whopping 4.7ghz. That difference is how you end up with a CPU that expects a whopping 210W of sustained power delivery (the 9900K's PL2 spec) even though its TDP is only 95W. AMD doesn't (didn't?) have an all-core boost concept, so their base clocks are just higher, making their TDP number closer to real-world. But still technically base-clock numbers and not boost numbers, and so you will still see power draw in excess of TDP.

mtgx 7y ago

In that case, Intel should be in big trouble, because the advertised TDP seems to be less than half the power required to reach the chips' advertised performance: > In this case, for the new 9th Generation Core processors, Intel has set the PL2 value to 210W. This is essentially the power required to hit the peak turbo on all cores, such as 4.7 GHz on the eight-core Core i9-9900K. So users can completely forget the 95W TDP when it comes to cooling. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/21 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9... In other words 1) Intel's advertised "TDP" = true? (they don't use the same original meaning of the "Total Design Power" anymore) 2) Intel's advertised peak performance = true (with caveats such as all the mitigations required for the CPU flaws, which lower performance) 3) Intel's advertised peak performance at advertised TDP = BIG FAT LIE

tracker1 7y ago

The difference in power is not enough to offset the price/performance differences. AMD is actually on par or better than Intel with Zen 2 anyway.