The complexity of the technology and the pace of innovation in the datacenter can be dizzying for anyone working in the space. What really excites me about AMD EPYC™ processors is that the tangible benefits of our products are part of that story. It is our unique feature set that creates an opportunity to drive exceptional performance and low TCO for our customers. At its core, there are three pillars to the EPYC proposition, each comprised of both engineering and economic considerations. First, a refresh is needed for a true datacenter transformation to occur. Second, speed is everything when it comes to data analytics and, thirdly, you don’t have to sacrifice performance for costs in the cloud. I took a shot at distilling this down in more detail below.
Refresh Needed for Datacenter Transformation
No question that the move to off-premise mega-datacenters to support entire IT operations for large enterprises is one of the most significant transformations in business (more on that below.) However, the company owned datacenter is still alive and well. There are processing needs and applications that an enterprise may want to keep close to home and under their own management. That doesn’t mean the on-premise infrastructure should stay locked into the past. The AMD EPYC single-socket platform is the game changer that should make a CIO saddled with an aging, underutilized and expensive two-socket system sit up and take notice. Disconnect those old SANS, move to a hyperconverged infrastructure and add secure encryption to your VMs. For example, a Dell PowerEdge 7415, is a VSAN ready node that can reduce your TCO 20% and cut your licensing costs in half1. Let AMD EPYC processors make you the hero with that next infrastructure upgrade.
Big Data Needs to be Fast
We have all been at the keynote or analyst seminar where the “growth in generated data” chart is the first slide (not surprisingly, it goes up and to the right). Our technology creates it and our technology must manage it, too. Having data isn’t an advantage anymore. Rather, analyzing it quickly and better than someone else is how you get ahead. Accelerating innovation and unlocking the next discovery cannot be memory bound by your processors’ limitations. AMD EPYC processors free high-performance computing from those constraints. And, paired with our AMD Radeon GPU products, we can apply the right architecture to the problem at hand, be it in inference or deep learning for machine intelligence. Notre Dame and The National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy are doing more with AMD EPYC processors, and so can you.
Redefining the Economics and Security of Cloud Services
The only reason cloud-based services exist is to deliver at scale a less costly alternative to owning and maintaining your own datacenter. IT customers buy capacity at a certain cost point – either on premise or off premise – it’s that simple. AMD EPYC processors are disrupting the incumbent in this market by being able to deliver more service at the same cost point, or equivalent service more affordably1. Tencent, Microsoft Azure, Baidu, Dropbox and more have picked AMD EPYC processors to support their offerings for the unique set of features and value AMD delivers. And in a world where data security seems to make the headlines every week, AMD EPYC can help deliver secure encryption to virtualized machines across more threads and more cores. You don’t have to choose between losing performance by shutting off hyperthreading or risking data loss between VMs.
By providing the right balance of compute, memory, I/O and security for high density environments AMD EPYC is a winning formula. It is changing the dynamics of the datacenter today and it deserves a closer look. The momentum we are seeing across our customers proves these points and we are just getting started. With a strong roadmap in place, I encourage you to begin your journey toward the future with AMD today.
Daniel Bounds, senior director, Datacenter Products for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5
120% Lower TCO and 50% Lower Licensing Costs: Demartek test report: Dell EMC PowerEdge R7415 AMD EPYC VMware vSAN Mixed Workloads Performance – April 2018 www.demartek.com/Demartek_Dell_EMC_PowerEdge_R7415_vSAN_Mixed_Workloads_Evaluation_2018-04.html
