Like a lot of folks, I hadn’t thought about AMD in a while. Intel is killing them in the high end and ARM is killing them on the low end, right? AMD was done for. I mean, I would see their CPUs in the occasional odd PCs, but it just came across as cheaper because it wasn’t as good. Or so I thought.
I saw AMD present at Tech Field Day Extra at VMware Explore a few weeks ago, and I was quite surprised. Their AMC EPYC CPU beats most Intel CPUs at almost every turn. They are faster for less money.
They also use less power to do the same amount of compute. My ears perked up at that one, as I’ve been focusing a lot on power consumption lately. It might have something to do with charging a Tesla at home. I’ve been looking at everything and how much power it consumes for the amount of value it brings me. I figured out the Microwave was costing me about $9/mth just sitting there waiting to be used. (28 Watts 24/7 at the rates I pay for electricity here in SoCal.)
It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing it to save money or to save the planet. CPUs typically run 24/7, and every watt you can save is money in your pocket. So if they do the same (or more) for less money, sign me up.
Later I asked Jason Collier the question I was surprised none of us thought to ask. “Yea, but what about ARM?” He said he had a different report showing they are doing the same thing to ARM. While the report does say they expect to see ARM respond to the disparities shown in the report, do not count AMD out in the cloud native space.
In short, I was quite impressed by AMD’s presentation and would recommend anyone building their own servers to give them a look. Faster, cheaper, greener. What’s not to like?
Written by W. Curtis Preston (@wcpreston), four-time O'Reilly author, and host of The Backup Wrap-up podcast. I am now the Technology Evangelist at Sullivan Strickler, which helps companies manage their legacy data
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