AMD Ryzen 9 16 Core Launch and New Threadripper Details

[AdrianB]

I don’t know about the whole longevity claim of a server chip over a HEDT part. Properly cooled a HEDT chip should last just as long as a server chip.

No, that is not true.

The longevity of a processor core depends mainly on 2 variables: the temperature (on which the degradation of the insulator layers depends) and the electrical current consumed by the core (on which the degradation of the conductor traces depends).

A core in a "server" CPU, e.g. Xeon Scalable or Epyc, is operated at a much lower maximum power than a core in a "workstation" CPU, e.g. Xeon W or Xeon E or Threadripper or Ryzen 9. That means it is also operated at a much lower maximum electrical current per core.

This is the reason for a longer lifetime when the CPU runs all the time at high load, even if you use a perfect cooler. With a bad cooler, obviously the lifetime will be even shorter.

Nevertheless, if you use a "workstation" CPU and you either underclock it or it stays most of the time idle (with power state management being active, e.g. with the "powersave" governor active in Linux, to reduce the clock frequency when idle), then of course you can achieve a longer lifetime than a "server" CPU that is 100% busy.

So the "workstation" CPU will have a shorter lifetime only when it is busy all the time, as it is normal for a real server application.

 

[AdrianB]

I don’t know about the whole longevity claim of a server chip over a HEDT part. Properly cooled a HEDT chip should last just as long as a server chip.

In my previous reply I have forgotten to mention that there also is a third variable, but that variable is not independent, so I did not enumerate it in the first message.

The degradation of the insulators depends on both the temperature and the voltage.

However, both the voltage and the electrical current consumed when the core is busy are determined by the clock frequency.

If you also consider the percentage of the time while a core is busy, which is the percentage of the time while the current has the high non-idle value, then the lifetime is determined by 3 variables: temperature, clock frequency and % busy.

 

[msg7086]

The problem with the new Threadripper models is that they are expensive enough so that for many applications it is cheaper to obtain the same performance with multiple Ryzen 9.

Just want to say that if condition allows, it's almost certain to run cheaper on multiple servers (farm) than individual box. For example, video transcoding farm, I'd use multiple 3800X or even 3600 paired with B450 if condition permits.

Single box is for convenience and for cases where splitting and spreading work is not very possible.

Same reason for our client to go E7 route because they want a single virtualized box containing a big set of servers. They ended up using 4 CPUs and 3TB of memory and packed them into one box.