AMD is making PCs and servers exciting again
AMD EPYC
Forget about smartphones and tablets, AMD is making what was long considered "old and boring" PC and server tech exciting again.
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It's been quite a few years since a desktop or server processor launch has elicited anything out of me but a tired yawn, but what I'm seeing coming out of the Sunnyvale chipmaker as of late is making me sit up and pay attention.
Across the board, from Ryzen in desktops to EPYC (the new branding for the silicon that was previously code-named Naples) in the datacenter and to Radeon Vega in workstations, AMD is delivering products that the people on the ground seemed to have been craving. Desktop users I've spoken with who have shifted to Ryzen are loving the performance and flexibility -- as well as price -- of AMDs new chips, while enterprise customers are eyeing with great interest what the EPYC platform will bring.
And across the board, there's a palpable excitement from everyone I've spoken to at AMD as to what the future holds, both on the consumer and enterprise fronts.
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With the new EPYC platform, AMD seems to be laser-focused on delivering four things -- flexible configurations, an open ecosystem, platforms that are optimized for modern workflows, and lowering total cost of ownership.
One aspect that seems to be piquing interest with EPYC the most is that it will offer what AMD calls "the industry's first no-compromise one-socket solutions." What this means is that enterprise customers will no longer be funneled into buying unnecessary two-socket servers because of arbitrary and artificial limitations on memory bandwidth and I/O.
AMD EPYC
Try finding a fully-featured, high-performance server in a single-socket configuration. You can't. But EPYC changes that. It's a big deal.
A game changer.
And it's making the server market exciting again.
Just having AMD re-enter the server market in such a big and meaningful way, and swinging punches again, is good for enterprise, especially the big names in the cloud business. Competition drives down costs, and AMD will be seen as a much-needed counter-pressure to what has become a market dominated by Intel and Nvidia.
AMD 'Naples' server processors
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