AMD Finishes Out The Zen 4 Server CPUs With Edgy 'Siena'
The Next Platform, Monday, September 18,2023
Different workloads need different mixes of price, performance, thermals, and longevity in the field out there on the edge and in the datacenter, and that is why server CPU makers for years have had a mix of processors that deliver on these vectors that are different from each other.
What makes 2023 different from 2003 is that these differences in the salient characteristics and packaging of these processors is more explicit and arguably more rich. With today's launch of the 'Siena' Epyc 8004 processors, based on the Zen 4c cores, AMD has completed the set, and soon all attention will turn to the 'Turin' Zen 5 generation due in 2024 and we are already hearing rumblings about the 'Venice' Zen 6 that we expect in 2025.
As we detailed back in June when the 'Bergamo' Epyc server variants debuted with the Zen 4c cores, the basic difference between the Zen 4 and the Zen 4c core that the former has 4 MB of L3 cache per core and the latter cuts that back to 2 MB of L3 cache per core.