The new AMD EPYC processors, which were announced last June, make their first appearance in three new Dell EMC 14th Gen servers aimed at more demanding use cases.
Michael Sharun, President of Dell EMC Canada’s Enterprise Division
Today, Dell EMC is enhancing its 14th Gen server portfolio, with the announcement of three new AMD-powered servers, the PowerEdge R6415, PowerEdge R7415 and PowerEdge R7425. They represent the first deployment of AMD’s new EPYC processors, which the chipmaker introduced last year as a counter to Intel’s recent dominance in the data centre.
“This is the first introduction of AMD back into the enterprise space,” said Michael Sharun, President of Dell EMC Canada’s Enterprise Division.
The EPYC processors have 32 cores (64 threads), 8 memory channels and 128 PCIe lanes.
“EPYC has a lot of cool features for more demanding workloads,” Sharun said. “The three models we are introducing are geared to those workloads – high performance computing, Big Data analytics, Internet of Things, and edge computing. They are optimized for that as well as graphics processing, and we have targeted these AMD servers for those particular workloads.
“These processors are very well-suited for very dense data paths,” Sharun continued. “It’s a very good feature to have for edge computing, and is suited very well for what enterprise customers are trying to do. They can think about scaling out instead of scaling up.”
Given Intel’s recent dominance over AMD in the server space, Sharun said that some work on creating awareness about the AMD servers among customers is required, but he doesn’t expect customer resistance to them.
“Dell EMC is really behind these server architectures as well, and we have put a lot of our server architecture into all of these,” he said. This includes the software common to earlier 14th generation PowerEdge servers, IDRAC9’s intelligent automation, and Quick Sync 2 management support. These models also have the same security features as other PowerEdge servers.
The smallest of the three new models is the 1U single-socket Dell EMC PowerEdge R6415. It has up to 32 cores, offers ultra-dense and scale-out computing capabilities, and is particularly well suited for edge deployments. Storage flexibility is enabled with up to 10 PCIe NVMe drives.
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R7415 is a 2U single-socket server, and the first AMD EPYC-based server platform certified as a VMware vSAN Ready Node. Dell EMC says that it offers up to 20 per cent better TCO per four-node cluster for vSAN deployments at the edge. Its 128 PCIe lanes provide accelerated east/west bandwidth for cloud computing and virtualization. It also has up to 2TB memory capacity and up to 24 NVMe drives.
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R7425 is a dual-socket server that the company is positioning for HPC. With up to 64 cores, it offers high bandwidth with dense GPU/FPGA capability. On standard benchmarks, the server’s superior memory bandwidth and core density provided excellent results across a wide range of HPC workloads.
“All three of these provide different configurations around what we are trying to accomplish,” Sharun said. “That’s where partners come in in terms of designing what’s best or each environment. These servers are very well suited for our partners who have reached out and established a presence in edge computing, the IOT and HPC. We need them to design solutions which include these servers, and be the true integrators that they are, providing very specialized solutions. We expect that partners will take these and drive a large amount of revenue from them.”
These AMD-powered servers are all available now.
