Xeon Cascade Lake

Intel has released a series of new benchmarks that claim that its Xeon-class Cascade Lake-AP CPUs run much faster than AMD's second-generation EPYC Rome CPUs. Benchmarks that Intel claims are representative of "real world" performance in the HPC segment compare Intel's 2e (dual socket) Xeon Platinum 9282 with AMD's EPYCX 7742 (also in a dual socket configuration).

Intwl claims Xeon Platinum 9282 (Cascade Lake-AP) is up to 84% more powerful than 64-core EPYCX 7742

The performance metrics for both processors were published on Medium, where Intel also recently published an article on core scaling and modern applications' dependence on the number of cores available on processors. According to Intel, 8 cores along with sustained frequencies would result in better scaling than a 12-core or 16-core chip.

For the HPC market, Intel says - More processor cores add computation, but overall system or workload performance depends on other factors, including:

• The performance of each core Software optimizations that take advantage of specific instructions Memory bandwidth to ensure the power of the cores Deployment at the cluster level deployed

Intel's latest benchmarks compared the Xeon Platinum 9200 to the EPYC 7742. The Xeon Platinum is one of the Cascade Lake-AP processors that includes two arrays instead of a single monolithic array, stacking up to 56 cores and 112 threads. The chip has a base clock of 2.60 GHz and a boost clock of 3.80 GHz along with 77 MB of cache and a TDP of 400W. Intel Cascade Lake-AP chips have 12 memory channels compared to AMD's 8 memory channels per chip.

The AMD EPYC 7742 is based on a 7nm process node (vs. Intel's 14nm ++++) and features 64 cores / 128 threads. The chip has a 2.25 GHz clock base and a 3.4 GHz boost clock with 256 MB of L3 cache, 128 PCIe Gen 4 tracks and a 225W TDP. Price also plays a role, the EPYC chip costs $ 6, 950 while the Xeon Platinum 9282 is suggested to be priced between $ 25, 000 and $ 50, 000.

So, from the outset, we can note that this is not a fair comparison, since not only does the Intel chip have a higher TDP, but its cost is at least 3.5 times higher than the AMD processor.

Benchmarks show that the Xeon Platinum 9282 offers an average performance increase of 31%, up to 84%. Among the applications used are Manufacturing, VASP, NAMD, GROMACS, FSI and LAMMPS.

Visit our guide on the best processors on the market

Intel goes on to claim that Xeon Platinum 9200 series processors offer a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Since the performance of the Xeon Platinum 9200 series is higher, fewer nodes would be required, reducing the cost of acquiring the nodes.

Despite this, several industry players are considering switching to EPYC, as is the case with Netflix, which is evaluating replacing its Xeon servers with the AMD option. We will keep you informed.

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