Zen 4 Madness: AMD EPYC Genoa With 96 Cores, 12-Channel DDR5 Memory, and AVX-512

By Aleksandar Kostovic
published

Leaked and geeked!

AMD EPYC Genoa Mockup
(Image credit: ExecutableFix)

In a recent Gigabyte hacking event that happened a bit over a week ago, attackers stole 112GB of data from the Gigabyte server. This included confidential files of the upcoming products and information shared under NDAs and contracts. Today, according to a new report, information regarding AMD's EPYC processors (codenamed Genoa) has emerged after the hackers posted the files online. According to the leaked information, the chips come with 96 cores, support 12 channels of DDR5 memory, and also mark the debut of AVX-512 support to AMD's lineup. 

Gigabyte is having a rough few days: from a PSU RMA debacle to the recent hacking incident, the situation has worsened. Attackers that stole 112GB of data from Gigabyte's server have published some information regarding AMD's upcoming EPYC Genoa CPU microarchitecture and some of its details.

Previously, we believed that Genoa was a 96-core design, and that turned out to be true. The leaked documents show that the Genoa is still made up of 8-core CCDs, but now there are 12 of them totaling 96 cores with 192 threads of Zen 4 IP. The platform to host this massive processor is AMD's SP5, pictured in the renders below.

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AMD EPYC Genoa
(Image credit: @KittyYYuko (Twitter))

A particularly interesting fact is that AMD has decided to pair 12-channel DDR5 memory with Genoa, giving all 96 cores lots of bandwidth to operate normally. Given that such a high number of cores requires massive speeds, a 12-channel controller should be sufficient. In addition, it appears that Intel's AVX-512 makes its debut in AMD processors. The leaked documents show the appearance of EVEX instructions in Genoa, which are actually an AVX-512 type of instruction, indicating an AVX-512 engine in these new processors.

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AMD EPYC Genoa
(Image credit: @KittyYYuko (Twitter))

Another interesting tidbit from the leak is the supposed power draw and power configuration. The highest-end SKU should have a 320 Watt TDP with a maximum power draw of 400 Watts. For 1 millisecond (ms), the CPU can draw 700 Watts, so server power supplies will need additional breathing room.

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Information about the TDP ranges has also been shared, pulling back a big part of the veil of secrecy wrapped around the Zen 4 powered Genoa chips. The hacked information is quite expansive and several entities are currently combing through it for more information. Stay tuned. 

Aleksandar Kostovic
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • PCWarrior
    TDP: 320W.
    Peak power requirement: 700W.

    If that was Intel doing this the AMD fbs will be jumping on their power consumption high horse. But now it's AMD it will, of course, all be good and justified.
    Reply
  • setx
    PCWarrior said:
    If that was Intel doing this the AMD fbs will be jumping on their power consumption high horse. But now it's AMD it will, of course, all be good and justified.
    And what is wrong with peak power of 700W? It doesn't affect average power draw in any way, just a requirement for power delivery design.
    Reply
  • Samipini
    PCWarrior said:
    TDP: 320W.
    Peak power requirement: 700W.

    If that was Intel doing this the AMD fbs will be jumping on their power consumption high horse. But now it's AMD it will, of course, all be good and justified.
    If AMD did this with 28 cores, then we would be outraged too. But this is 96 cores. Your logic amazes me
    Reply
  • deesider
    PCWarrior said:
    TDP: 320W.
    Peak power requirement: 700W.

    If that was Intel doing this the AMD fbs will be jumping on their power consumption high horse. But now it's AMD it will, of course, all be good and justified.
    700W but for 1 millisecond. If you have a Gigabyte PSU you'll be screwed...
    Reply
  • PCWarrior
    Samipini said:
    If AMD did this with 28 cores, then we would be outraged too. But this is 96 cores. Your logic amazes me
    In my post above, I did not take a position of whether any of these power limits are reasonable or not. What I simply stated is that if this news was about Intel cpus, I can guarantee you that the AMD fbs would be posting all over calling them power hungry, fire hazard, spaceheater, nuclear power station, uncoolable, inefficient, etc, etc. But now that’s AMD there are all sorts of justifications: the number of cores, the performance, the duration of power draw, etc, etc. The other day there was an article about Intel’s Alderlake cpus having an increased peak current limit requirement, which is exactly the same thing (peak power requirement is peak current limit requirement for a very brief period (typically 1ms) times 12V ). Just have a look at the comments and read what the AMD fbs were saying. If you want to be amazed look no further to the incredible double standard and hypocrisy of AMD fbs...
    Reply
  • Samipini
    PCWarrior said:
    In my post above, I did not take a position of whether any of these power limits are reasonable or not. What I simply stated is that if this news was about Intel cpus, I can guarantee you that the AMD fbs would be posting all over calling them power hungry, fire hazard, spaceheater, nuclear power station, uncoolable, inefficient, etc, etc. But now that’s AMD there are all sorts of justifications: the number of cores, the performance, the duration of power draw, etc, etc. The other day there was an article about Intel’s Alderlake cpus having an increased peak current limit requirement, which is exactly the same thing (peak power requirement is peak current limit requirement for a very brief period (typically 1ms) times 12V ). Just have a look at the comments and read what the AMD fbs were saying. If you want to be amazed look no further to the incredible double standard and hypocrisy of AMD fbs...
    It's easy why we critique Alder lake when it has only 8 cores and a bunch of garbage cores. it drawing more than 300 watts is just unreasonable for an 8 core. Not counting the small cores cuz it's supposed to be "efficient". We call Intel power hungry because an 8 core uses almost half the power of a 96 core cpu. That just makes no sense. If you still think like before, just remember that usually, more cores = more power consumption, but Intel is same cores, big increase in power consumption.
    Reply
  • dalek1234
    Let's do the per core math:
    Zen3 EPYC 7763 , 64 cores, has a TDP of 280W. That's 4.375 Watts per core.
    Zen4, 96 cores, has a TDP of 320W. That's 3.33 Watts per core.

    So Zen 4 has a smaller per-core power draw than Zen3. Looks impressive to me.
    Reply
  • PCWarrior
    Samipini said:
    It's easy why we critique Alder lake when it has only 8 cores and a bunch of garbage cores. it drawing more than 300 watts is just unreasonable for an 8 core. Not counting the small cores cuz it's supposed to be "efficient". We call Intel power hungry because an 8 core uses almost half the power of a 96 core cpu. That just makes no sense. If you still think like before, just remember that usually, more cores = more power consumption, but Intel is same cores, big increase in power consumption.
    For Alderlake it’s only the peak power/current requirement that increased (not tdp which remains at 125W neither PL2 which from 250W went down to 228W) and it is exactly that increase in peak power/current requirement, what AMD fbs were bashing Intel for the other day. So when it comes to AMD cpus we should disregard the peak power figure as it only applies for 1ms, yet when it comes to Intel cpus it is justified to used it to bash Intel. That’s exactly the double standard I was talking about.

    Also apparently in your understanding, core count is all what matters in declaring something efficient. Apparently, all workloads scale indefinitely and perfectly with cores, and there aren’t any that only benefit from per-core performance increase. So, all these mainstream cpus, including the likes of 5950X, tuned for per core performance must be useless. According to your logic the 5950X is highly inefficient as it is only has 1/8 of the cores yet it has 1/3 the tdp i.e. over 2.5x the power consumption per core compared to these 96-core cpus. By the way, what do you make of the fact that an idle 64-core 3990X system uses 50-60W more power than an idle previous generation Intel/AMD mainstream 8-core cpu system?

    Apparently, for you, Skylake performance level of cores are garbage. The same level of per core performance that, by the way, beats (or at worst matches) Zen 2 which is still what AMD is selling with current Threadrippers. So does the 3990W consists of 64 “garbage cores” in your view? I am also sure when AMD makes its own hybrid cpus, you will be consistent and call their little cores “garbage cores” too. You won’t be comparing their performance to that of big cores or find equivalency to big cores from previous architectures.
    Reply
  • JayNor
    "Given that such a high number of cores requires massive speeds, a 12-channel controller should be sufficient."

    The hpc/ai operations on Intel server chips are memory bandwidth limited. Intel is providing a SPR server chip version for Argonne with 4 stacks of HBM, which effectively adds 32 channels of DDR. I would guess that is sufficient for Argonne, in combination with the Ponte Vecchio GPUs, which have 8 stacks of HBM per GPU (64 DDR channels).
    Reply
  • JayNor
    "In addition, it appears that Intel's AVX-512 makes its debut in AMD processors."

    does the AMD/Intel cross-license include avx512/dlboost/bfloat16 and other operations?

    Intel is adding AMX tiled matrix hardware in SPR for GEMM FMA operations, so we'll see, probably next Monday, what this adds relative to Intel's avx512/dlboost operations.
    Reply