The coolest servers using AMD’s new EPYC Milan CPUs

AMD has kicked off the launch of its third-generation EPYC Milan processors with a major promise: the new chips will go into more than 100 server platforms this year.

The chipmaker called third-generation EPYC “the highest-performance server processor in the industry, at the socket level and at the per-core level” across every core-count boundary for cloud, enterprise and high-performance computing workloads.

The company said internal tests show the new processors are two times faster than Intel’s second-generation Xeon Scalable chips.

The new Milan processors are compatible with server platforms for AMD’s second-generation EPYC processors while supporting all the new features, like Secure Nested Paging and Shadow Stack. For that reason, company executives believe adoption of Milan will be faster than the previous generation.

Among the server vendors supporting the launch of AMD’s new EPYC Milan processors are ASUS, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Supermicro. What follows are some of the coolest servers that have been announced as part of the processor launch.

Supermicro H12 SuperBlade

The H12 SuperBlade is a massive 8U GPU blade server than can support up to 20 hot-pluggable single-socket server nodes for applications that can benefit from high compute density such as high-performance computing, virtualization and AI. The H12 SuperBlade supports three node types with different configurations. Each node comes with 8 DIMM slots for a total memory capacity of 2 TB. Two of the nodes come with two hot-pluggable NVMe/SAS/SATA drives and 2 M.2 drives while the other has room for one double-wide or two single-wide GPUs. The system is equipped with advanced networking capabilities, courtesy of Nvidia’s Mellanox InfiniBand 200G switch and up to four 25GbE switches.

ASUS RS720A-E11

The RS720A-E11 is a dual-socket 2U GPU server for AI training, high-performance computing and data analytics that is among several new easy-to-configure servers from ASUS supporting AMD’s new EPYC Milan processors. The server supports up to 32 memory DIMM slots, four dual-slot GPUs, 24 NVMe drives, nine PCIe 4.0 slots and two M.2 slots. ASUS said the RS720A-E11 ranked No. 1 for performance with dual AMD EPYC 7763 processors across SPEC CPU2017 benchmarks for integer rate, floating-point rate, integer speed and floating-point workloads.

Cisco UCS C225 M6

Cisco Systems is serving up high core density in a 1RU server with the new Cisco UCS C225 M6, which can support up to 128 cores between two AMD EPYC Milan processors. However, the server has also been optimized for single-socket configuration, which Cisco said can suit the needs of most customers, reducing software licensing costs and total cost of ownership. The server has capacity for 32 DIMM slots for a total memory capacity of 8 TB, up to 10 hot-pluggable slots for NVMe/SAS/SATA drives and up to three PCIe 4.0 slots, with options available for GPUs and a RAID controller. The server is expected to come out this summer.

Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545

Dell Technologies is dubbing the new Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545 an “incredibly powerful” dual-socket 4U server built for accelerating AI and other demanding workloads. The server, which is air-cooled “for greater efficiency and lower cost of operation,” supports the highest core counts from AMD’s EPYC Milan lineup in addition to four of Nvidia’s A100 GPUs, which, for the first time in a Dell EMC server, are connected by the new Nvidia NVLink baseboard. The server comes with 32 memory DIMM slots, 10 2.5-inch hot plug SAS/SATA slots and up to eight 2.5-inch NVMe slot. The company touts that the server can analyse more than 150,000 images per second, which it considers a major feat given the fact that the PowerEdge XE8545 has standard air cooling. The server is slated to launch on 29 March.

Cisco UCS C245 M6

Cisco promises “significant performance and efficiency gains” with the new Cisco UCS C245 M6, which it said is well-suited for big data analytics, databases, collaboration, virtualisation and server consolidation. The company said the UCS C245 M6 can be deployed as a standalone server or as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System with its Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service cloud-based management platform. The server supports one or two AMD EPYC Milan processors, and it has capacity for 32 DIMM slots for a total of 8 TB in memory capacity, up to 28 hot-pluggable slots for NVMe/SAS/SATA drives and up to eight PCIe 4.0 slots, with options available for GPUs and a RAID controller. The server is expected to come out halfway through the year

Supermicro H12 AS-2114GT-DNR

The AS-2114GT-DNR is a “dense and scalable multi-GPU powerhouse” from Supermicro that is built to deliver “maximum acceleration” for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The 2U, two-node server supports four Nvidia A100 or AMD Instinct M100 GPUs. Each node supports up to eight DIMM slots for a total of 2 TB in memory capacity as well as two front hot-swappable U.2 NVMe drives. The system also comes with six PCIe 4.0 slots, one AIOM card slot and two M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots.