AMD debuted AMD EPYC™ server processors over seven years ago. Now on the 4th generation – with each new generation providing an increase in performance and energy efficiency – leading cloud, enterprise and HPC customers are adopting AMD EPYC to tackle their most difficult business challenges.
Beginning with 3rd Gen EPYC processors, AMD introduced 3D V-Cache™, a technology that delivers impressive performance gains for a range of workloads that tackle demanding, data-heavy challenges. We've seen customers with complex design and simulation challenges significantly speed up their work on commercially available applications. The media & entertainment sector has used 3D V-Cache to speed up the rendering process. Even AMD customers in the financial sector have benefitted from 3D V-Cache on some of their home-grown applications.
AMD 3D V-Cache technology uses 3D die stacking, with a copper-to-copper “bumpless” design to increase the size of the L3 cache. Compared with general purpose EPYC processors, this triples the shared L3 cache from 32 MB to 96 MB per CCD (core chiplet die). For 4th Gen EPYC processors, this can mean a total L3 cache size of up to 1,152 MB. AMD EPYC processors that feature 3D V-Cache technology are designated with a "X" at the end of the product name.
3D V-Cache offers major benefits for design and simulation workloads such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), finite element analysis (FEA) and Electronic Design Automation (EDA).
One customer that's benefitted from faster EDA workloads is STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest semiconductor firm. As the demand for digitally-enabled products grows, companies like STMicroelectronics need to deliver more innovative and complex chip designs -- and at a faster pace. They're also obligated to keep up with sustainability goals.
To meet those demands, STMicroelectronics deployed HPE servers and Microsoft Azure cloud instances powered by 3rd Gen EPYC processors. After HPE provided servers and CPUs for STMicroelectronics to test in its own data center, the results were clear. Using 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors for EDA and computer-aided design (CAD) workloads, STMicroelectronics saw a 12 percent performance boost over every other CPU on the market.
Meanwhile, test results show how EDA workload performance has improved from 3rd Gen EPYC CPUs featuring 3D V-Cache to comparable 4th Gen EPYC processors. For instance, Synopsys VCS -- which enables shift-left verification flows early in the design cycle -- saw an approximate 1.28x performance boost from the 32-core EPYC 9384X processor in comparison to the 32-core EPYC 7573X chip. When using the 4th Gen EPYC 9684X processor, featuring 96 cores, Synopsys VCS saw an approximate 1.55x performance boost over the comparable 3rd Gen EPYC 7773X processor, with 64 cores.
Other EDA workloads that saw similar generational improvements include Synopsys PrimeSim SPICE, Siemens Tessent, Synopsys Formality Equivalence, and Cadence Spectre X.
In the field of computational fluid dynamics, tests running ANSYS® Fluent® show that the AMD EPYC 9684X delivers about 2.1x faster time-to-market in comparison to the Intel Xeon 8480+.
3D V-Cache technology is the perfect example of the ability of AMD to continuously deliver better performance and efficiency with creative innovation. If you are running data-intensive workloads in areas like EDA, CFD or FEA, you can't overlook EPYC processors featuring 3D V-Cache.
