At the Advancing AI conference organized by AMD, the company gave its first presentation (following yesterday’s unveiling of a CPU) of its upcoming Epyc processor series based on the Zen 6 architecture. During the event, Lisa Su introduced several CPU lineups and announced a launch date scheduled for this year for the “standard” Epyc 9006 series. The company is making some big announcements here, with processors capable of up to 256 cores, and some models featuring over 1 GB of L3 cache!
Epyc Zen 6: Multiple product lines available!
A large number of cores!
With this new series, AMD’s processors are based on the company’s latest core architecture: Zen 6. These processors can feature up to 256 Zen 6c cores and 512 threads, while models with Zen 6 cores can incorporate up to 96. This includes support for the PCIe 6.0 interface as well as memory speeds of up to 12,800 MT/s via MRDIMM. With more conventionalDDR5, supported frequencies reach 8,000 MT/s. Additionally, these CPUs support the AVX-512 BMM instruction set and CXL 3.1 for memory.
Of course, we’ll still see support for 128PCIe lanes (6.0 in this case), with possible configurations in 1P or 2P (one or two sockets), while the TDP will reach 600W.
Venice-X:Going All-In onL3 Cache:
With Venice-X, it’s a real treat when it comes to cache, as these models feature 3D V-Cache. As a reminder, this is a 64 MB matrix of additional L3 cache stacked on the CCD. With these processors, which total up to 96 cores, the amount of L3 cache could reach 1,152 MB… Yes, over 1 GB of L3 cache on a single processor. In addition, we’re looking at a maximum clock speed of 5.15 GHz, while the CPUs will support up to 16 memory channels with MRDIMM support at 12,800 MT/s, as mentioned earlier. This series is set to launch in 2027, while the non-X Venice models are scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year.
EPYC Verano: LPDDR5X Support:
With this variant, AMD plans to offer processors with up to 72 cores running at up to 5 GHz. But what sets this series apart is its support forLPDDR5X memory, combined with an xGMI interface running at 112 Gbps—compared to 64 Gbps via PCIe 6.0. This series of processors is geared toward the artificial intelligence sector, where CPU-GPU communication and energy efficiency remain top priorities.
High performance:
Of course, AMD took the opportunity to tout the performance of its processors by comparing them to Intel’s Xeon 6 or Amazon’s Graviton5. Unsurprisingly, in the various scenarios presented, AMD’s processors delivered mind-blowing performance, with ratios of 2.6x on MySQL that can reach 3.7x in web server use. Here, the baseline 1.0 was the 128-core Xeon 6980P.
