The Entry Server Market is Wide Open for AMD as Intel Half-Abandons its Entry Xeon
I distinctly remember 2019. That year, Intel came out with its 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable line, codenamed “Cascade Lake” processors, a small refresh of the 1st Gen Xeon Scalable line. On the other hand, at the AMD EPYC 7002 “Rome” launch, AMD offered something with more CPU cores, more memory, and more PCIe connectivity. History will show that the EPYC 7002 was when the company’s fortunes in the server market shifted and it started really gaining share. The entry server market is almost there as well for AMD, but with a few pieces missing
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AMD EPYC 4005 “Grado” Up Against a Half-Abandoned Intel Xeon
Earlier this month on STH, we covered the AMD EPYC 4005 launch. You can feel free to browse the benchmarks, or watch the video, but AMD delivered a Zen 5 upgrade to the EPYC 4000 line.
With that launch, let us be clear that Intel and AMD are now in completely different places from a TDP perspective:
AMD EPYC 4545P 16 cores at 65W TDP ($549), without the need for a PCH
Intel Xeon 6369P 8 cores at 95W TDP ($606), needs 6W TDP Intel C266 PCH ($57)
AMD now has the ability to provide twice the core count at around 64% the TDP and 83% of the component cost. More cores, lower power, and lower cost are a big win in the server space. Consider that many of the configurations in this segment are sub $800 and a $100+ BOM difference is huge. We did not get to test the EPYC 4545P yet, but on STH, our readers are clearly honing in on that part as the 170W TDP parts are harder to fit into traditional colocation budgets. Also, those in high power cost jurisdictions like Europe strongly gravitate to lower power parts.
Beyond the performance there is something else going on, and that is the Intel Xeon 6300 series is weaker than previous generations of Xeon E platforms.
Intel Xeon 6300 Series is Half-Abandoned
For a quick refresher, the Intel Xeon E-2400 series was refreshed into the Xeon 6300 series to align with the Intel Xeon 6 branding. Intel’s marketing thrust has the Xeon 6900 series as the high-end, the Xeon 6700 series as mainstream, and the Xeon 6300 series as the lower-end.
From a virtualization perspective, this is now a bit of a nightmare dressed up in Xeon 6 marketing numerics. In terms of different cores we have:
P-Core 1 with AVX-512: Intel Xeon 6900P, Xeon 6700P, Xeon SoC
P-Core 2 without AVX-512: Intel Xeon 6300P
E-Core 1 without AVX-512: Intel Xeon 6700E and for limited customers the Xeon 6900E
Practically that means if you have a VM running on one of these, moving between Xeon 6 platforms means you have a different set of instructions moving between those three designs.
That P-Core 2 is a big deal when it comes to AI. Without AVX-512, Intel also is missing features like VNNI for AI acceleration and the higher-end Intel AMX solution on the P-Core 1 designs. AI is all the buzz right now, and the Intel Xeon 6300 is borderline featureless. For the E-Core 1, it is a core specifically tuned more for integer throughput per watt, so one might forgive it on that platform, but in a performance core, that is hard to take. In contrast, AMD now has the 512b data path AVX-512 with Zen 5 and VNNI in this space.
Saying “half-abandoned” is tough, but that is exactly what Intel has done.