A few months ago AMD first showed its Naples platform which is a new high-performance server CPU that is based on the same Zen architecture as its recently released Ryzen chips. The Naples CPU packs up to 32 cores and dual CPU support under the heat spreader. If installed in a two-socket server, it supports up to 4TB of DDR4 memory.


The wait seems to be over and AMD is ready to show more details regarding their Naples server processors, which will launch in the second quarter of this year with full availability of processors and motherboards from OEMs and system integrators.

AMD Naples comes with up to 32 cores and 64 threads as well as an 8 channel memory interface and a maximum of 2TB DDR4-2667 memory. Furthermore Naples features 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes. Rumors also suggested that the chip will support sixteen 10GbE interfaces, but this bit of information has not yet been confirmed by AMD. On top of that also the number of supported SATA/SAS ports is unknown.

Naples will be available for single and dual socket motherboard. In the case of dual socket systems up to 64 cores and 128 threads are possible alongside 32 DDR4 DIMM slots, where each channel is to offer 21.3 GB/s of bandwidth. According to AMD, the Naples platform offers up to 45% more cores, 122% more memory bandwidth and 60% more I/O than its competitor. At the moment the Intel Xeon E5-2699A V4 is the CPU with highest core count available. The Intel Xeon E5-2699A V4 is based on 14nm architecture and features 22 cores and 44 threads. This CPU comes with a quad channel DDR4-2400 memory interface offering up to 76.8 GB/s (19.2GB/s per channel) of total bandwidth. Looking at the PCIe lane count we find 40, which is significantly less than what the Naples CPUs support.

AMD configured two dual-socket test systems for a live demonstration, one based was on AMD Naples and the other on Broadwell-E. The first system featured a 32 core Naples chip with 512GB DDR4-2400 memory, while the second was based on two Xeon E5-2699A V4 with 22 cores and 384GB DDR4-1866 memory. The company ran three different test with custom workloads. According to AMD, the Naples system was 2.5x faster than Intel Xeon although there aren't details on the system settings, so these results need to be taken with a grain of salt.

As of today, there is no word on pricing yet but it should be competitive with Intel's offerings. At the moment the Intel Xeon E5-2699A V4 is available on Geizhals for 6623 Euro. AMD will talk about its upcoming products during the Open Compute Summit later this week and we expect to read more information during the presentation.





Source: Tom’s Hardware