Intel has been a leader in the market of service solutions for many years, our materials are regularly published about it. Nevertheless, competing market participants are successfully declaring themselves. EPYC series processors left the AMD developer factories and managed to get the approval of users and critics. But AMD for some reason did not publish any articles about the new product, except for marketing material called EPYC SoC Sest4. Recently, it became possible to test the new product and independently compare the performance of AMD and Intel processors, thanks to ASUS staff. It was decided to compare the record holder with the line of Intel processors and share the results.
A little about the testing methodology
When choosing a method, prioritize technical indicators. During testing, those processor tasks that the server solves as it works will be analyzed.
Another goal is to get a basic idea of the potential capabilities of processors and compare performance with already published processor performance ratings. Of course, the priority of the problems that users encounter is: processing large flows, building complex software, working with database management systems with load. It was decided to conduct such tests:
- The set of combined tests (Geekbench).
- Compilation of a set of libraries.
- STREAM memory evaluation test.
- NAMD performance test.
During the test, the following servers and their engineering characteristics were analyzed:
- AMD EPYC CPU 7351/516 GB RAM / 2x800 GB SSD.
- Intel Xeon Silver CPU 4114/384 GB RAM / 2x800 GB SSD.
- Intel Xeon Gold CPU 6140/384 GB RAM / 2x800 GB.
Zen Organization
AMD EPYC is based on Zen microarchitecture. The latter is used in server and desktop versions. EPYC used 8-core crystals from 2 CCX modules (Core Complex). So AMD has a 4-core processor module with a shared level 3 cache.
AMD EPYC has 16 cores: two 8-core crystals are connected by the Hyperlink Infinity Fabric bus, they have a common memory counter. Significant improvements include 2 threads per core, memory of decoded operations, completely new information processing capabilities (AVX, AVX2, BMI-1, BMI-2, AES, SHA-1 / SHA-256, RDSEED and SMAP) AMD, and significant level 2 cache - 512 KB per core. The AVX-512 instructions are not supported.
EPYC has finalized its energy efficiency indicator. Thanks to new algorithms, you can determine the flow of downloads, optimize power consumption. Moreover, in EPYC, core nutrition is regulated separately.
Geekbench Tests
Having examined the theory, you need to start practice. Geekbench - these are tests, the result of which points are awarded. Initially, the process was launched on AMD EPYC and Intel. Intel Xeon Gold received 4399 points in testing the performance comparison of single-core processors and 74097 points in multi-core. Intel Xeon Silver 4114 - 3410 and 43971, respectively, and AMD - 3737 and 61235 points.
Benchmark STREAM
STREAM is used to evaluate the performance rating of processors and supercomputers. AMD and Intel microarchitectures are different. Let's see how they work in the subsystem memory.
The difficulty in this test arose due to the unevenness of the indicators: AMD has 8 memory channels, and Intel - only 6. The GCC compiler was used to build the program. As a result, it turned out that AMD greatly outperformed Intel, but we will not rush to the final conclusion. A good result in STREAM and similar tests does not mean a high level of performance. Pay attention to the results of practical tests.
After downloading and installing the official version of Boost, we compared the performance of processors. Intel Xeon Gold server completed in 9 minutes and 12 seconds, AMD showed 10 minutes. 15 seconds, and Intel Xeon Silver - as much as 12 minutes.
Benchmark "NAMD"
Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics calculates the molecular dynamics used as the benchmark for evaluating the performance of floating point calculations. The choice fell on him, since it is based on the tasks of counting and creates a significant load on the processor itself. For testing, compiled binary files were used and 2 tests were performed: STMV and APO A-1 with threads limiting the execution time. In addition to the three well-known servers, a server with an Intel Xeon E-5 2630v4 processor was used in the measurement.
When testing a tobacco mosaic satellite virus, the time it takes to complete the task is important. Intel Xeon Gold took the first position, followed by AMD EPYC with a result of 224,000992 seconds. The third was Intel Xeon Silver - 250.988705 seconds, the last - Intel Xeon E-5 with a result of 262.287109 seconds.
The Apoleprotein A-1 test produced the following results: Intel Xeon Gold ranks first with a result of 19.105089, second place and 22.09503 with AMD EPYC. The third Intel Xeon Silver is 25.303406, and the Intel Xeon (23.258205) is the worst.
Intel Xeon Gold showed its best side and was the first in the results of all tests.
Conclusion
We hope this article helped you. After all, you now know more about all the development capabilities and about the processor classifications by performance.