Earlier we reported that Intel called out the AMD EPYC server processor line, by calling them "glued together and inconsistent" during a presentation outlining the benefits of its Xeon line. AMD has decided to respond to these allegations in a calm and collected fashion during the "EPYC Tech Day" keynote.
The General Manager for Enterprise Solutions at AMD, Scott Aylor, addressed these allegations head-on during his talk, without mentioning Intel directly. He responded as follows:
“There’s a theory out there that EPYC is just 4 desktop processors glued together. When you look at throughout the presentations today, from Mike Clark, about the memory sizes and features that he has built into the core and when you hear from Kevin the security enhancements that are in there, when you hear from Jerry about the over provisioning of memory bandwidth between the devices, you hear from Sam determinism features that aren’t available from the competitor that were built for enterprise. Hopefully you will realize this is not a glued together desktop processor.”
Aylor also pointed out that AMD could have built a "monolithic part", but manufacturing would be troublesome for the company. Beyond that, it would have impacted the chip performance wise, making it slower in comparison to its main competition.
Although the Zen-B1 architecture can be regarded as "inferior" to that of its Intel counterparts; real world applications and implementations should not suffer for it, not to mention that the performance-to-price ratio is clearly favoring AMD here. Given that it normally ignores its competition - publicly, at least - Intel"s defensive position suggests that AMD might have rattled its rival"s cage, so to speak. AMD also pointed out that, contrary to the allegations made by Intel, the company has the full support of some of the largest Cloud providers and ODMs, including Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
AMD announced the EPYC line of products earlier this year, with pricing that starts at just $400 for the entry level part. The company also heated up the desktop market when it announced that its Threadripper high-end processor will start at $799 for a 12-core chip, with the top-tier model coming in at $999 for 16-cores.
Source: WCCFTech | Image via WCCFTech