Sizing Up Servers: Intel's Skylake-SP Xeon versus AMD's EPYC 7000 - The Server CPU Battle of the Decade?

Testing Notes

For the EPYC launch, AMD sent us their best SKU: the EPYC 7601. Meanwhile Intel gave us a choice between the top bin Xeon 8180 and the Xeon 8176. Considering that the latter had 165-173W TDP, similar to AMD's best EPYC, we felt that the Xeon 8176 was the best choice. 

Unfortunately, our time testing the two platforms has been limited. In particular, we only received AMD's EPYC system last week, and the company did not put an embargo on the results. This means that we can release the data now, in time to compare it to the new Skylake-SP Xeons, however it also means that we've only had a handful of days to work with the platform before writing all of this up for today's embargo. We're confident in the data, but it means that we haven't had a chance to tease out the nuances of EPYC quite yet, and that will have to be something we get to in a future article.

Meanwhile we should note that we've had to retire the bulk of our historical benchmark data, as we upgraded both our compiler and OS (see below). Due to this, we only had a very limited amount of time to run additional systems, and for that reason we've opted include Intel's Xeon E5-2690. The Sandy Bridge-EP processor is about 5 years old, and for customers who aren't upgrading their servers every single generation, it's these servers that we believe are most likely to get upgraded in this round. So for server managers looking at finally buying into new hardware, you can get an idea of much return of investment you get. 

Benchmark Configuration and Methodology

All of our testing was conducted on Ubuntu Server "Xenial" 16.04.2 LTS (Linux kernel  4.4.0 64 bit). The compiler that ships with this distribution is GCC 5.4.0. 

You will notice that the DRAM capacity varies among our server configurations. The reason is that we had little time left before today's launch embargo. Removing any hardware is always a risk, so we decided to run our tests without significantly changing the internal hardware of the systems we received from AMD and Intel (SSDs were still replaced). As far as we know, all of our tests fit in 128 GB, so DRAM capacity should not have much influence on performance. But it wil have a impact on total energy consumption, which we will discuss. 

Last but not least, we want to note how the performance graphs have been color-coded. Orange is AMD's EPYC, dark blue is Intel's best (Skylake-SP), and light blue is the previous generation Xeons (Xeon E5-v4) . Gray has been used for the soon-to-be-replaced Xeon v1. 

Intel's Xeon "Purley" Server – S2P2SY3Q (2U Chassis)

The typical BIOS settings can be seen below; we enabled hyperthreading and Intel virtualization. 

AMD EPYC 7601 –  (2U Chassis)

Five years after our "Piledriver review", a new AMD server arrives in the Sizing Servers Lab. 

Intel's Xeon E5 Server – S2600WT (2U Chassis)

The typical BIOS settings can be seen below. 

HP-G8 (2U Chassis) - Xeon E5-2690

Other Notes

Both servers are fed by a standard European 230V (16 Amps max.) power line. The room temperature is monitored and kept at 23°C by our Airwell CRACs.