The Coolest Servers Using AMD’s New EPYC Milan CPUs

Among the server vendors supporting the launch of AMD’s new EPYC Milan processors are ASUS, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and Supermicro.

More Than 100 Server Platforms Expected This Year

AMD has kicked off the launch of its third-generation EPYC Milan processors with a major promise: the new chips will go into more than 100 server platforms this year.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company is calling third-generation EPYC “the highest-performance server processor in the industry, at the socket level and at the per-core level” across every core-count boundary for cloud, enterprise and high-performance computing workloads. The company said internal tests show the new processors are two times faster than Intel’s second-generation Xeon Scalable chips.

The new Milan processors are compatible with server platforms for AMD’s second-generation EPYC processors while supporting all the new features, like Secure Nested Paging and Shadow Stack. For that reason, company executives believe adoption of Milan will be faster than the previous generation.

Among the server vendors supporting the launch of AMD’s new EPYC Milan processors are ASUS, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and Supermicro. What follows are some of the coolest servers that have been announced as part of the processor launch.

Supermicro H12 SuperBlade

The H12 SuperBlade is a massive 8U GPU blade server than can support up to 20 hot-pluggable single-socket server nodes for applications that can benefit from high compute density such as high-performance computing, virtualization and AI. The H12 SuperBlade supports three node types with different configurations. Each node comes with 8 DIMM slots for a total memory capacity of 2 TB. Two of the nodes come with two hot-pluggable NVMe/SAS/SATA drives and 2 M.2 drives while the other has room for one double-wide or two single-wide GPUs. The system is equipped with advanced networking capabilities, courtesy of Nvidia’s Mellanox InfiniBand 200G switch and up to four 25GbE switches.

ASUS RS720A-E11

The RS720A-E11 is a dual-socket 2U GPU server for AI training, high-performance computing and data analytics that is among several new easy-to-configure servers from ASUS supporting AMD’s new EPYC Milan processors. The server supports up to 32 memory DIMM slots, four dual-slot GPUs, 24 NVMe drives, nine PCIe 4.0 slots and two M.2 slots. ASUS said the RS720A-E11 ranked No. 1 for performance with dual AMD EPYC 7763 processors across SPEC CPU2017 benchmarks for integer rate, floating-point rate, integer speed and floating-point workloads.

Cisco UCS C225 M6

Cisco Systems is serving up high core density in a 1RU server with the new Cisco UCS C225 M6, which can support up to 128 cores between two AMD EPYC Milan processors. However, the server has also been optimized for single-socket configuration, which Cisco said can suit the needs of most customers, reducing software licensing costs and total cost of ownership. The server has capacity for 32 DIMM slots for a total memory capacity of 8 TB, up to 10 hot-pluggable slots for NVMe/SAS/SATA drives and up to three PCIe 4.0 slots, with options available for GPUs and a RAID controller. The server is expected to come out this summer.

Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545

Dell Technologies is dubbing the new Dell EMC PowerEdge XE8545 an “incredibly powerful” dual-socket 4U server built for accelerating AI and other demanding workloads. The server, which is air-cooled “for greater efficiency and lower cost of operation,” supports the highest core counts from AMD’s EPYC Milan lineup in addition to four of Nvidia’s A100 GPUs, which, for the first time in a Dell EMC server, are connected by the new Nvidia NVLink baseboard. The server comes with 32 memory DIMM slots, 10 2.5-inch hot plug SAS/SATA slots and up to eight 2.5-inch NVMe slot. The company touts that the server can analyze more than 150,000 images per second, which it considers a major feat given the fact that the PowerEdge XE8545 has standard air cooling. The server is slated to launch on March 29.

Cisco UCS C245 M6

Cisco promises “significant performance and efficiency gains” with the new Cisco UCS C245 M6, which it said is well-suited for big data analytics, databases, collaboration, virtualization and server consolidation. The company said the UCS C245 M6 can be deployed as a standalone server or as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System with its Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service cloud-based management platform. The server supports one or two AMD EPYC Milan processors, and it has capacity for 32 DIMM slots for a total of 8 TB in memory capacity, up to 28 hot-pluggable slots for NVMe/SAS/SATA drives and up to eight PCIe 4.0 slots, with options available for GPUs and a RAID controller. The server is expected to come out this summer.

Supermicro H12 AS-2114GT-DNR

The AS-2114GT-DNR is a “dense and scalable multi-GPU powerhouse” from Supermicro that is built to deliver “maximum acceleration” for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The 2U, two-node server supports four Nvidia A100 or AMD Instinct M100 GPUs. Each node supports up to eight DIMM slots for a total of 2 TB in memory capacity as well as two front hot-swappable U.2 NVMe drives. The system also comes with six PCIe 4.0 slots, one AIOM card slot and two M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots.

HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 Plus

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Apollo 6500 Gen 10 Plus is among the systems supporting AMD’s EPYC Milan chips that are designed for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The 6U system comes with options for single-socket or dual-socket processor configurations as well as support for as many as 16 GPUs, which can consist of Nvidia A100s or AMD Instinct M100s. The system can also support up to six high-speed fabric interconnects, whether they are Ethernet, Nvidia Mellanox InfiniBand or HPE Cray Slingshot. In addition, the system supports up to 32 DIMMS of DDR4 SmartMemory and up to 16 storage drives. The system will be available on April 6.

HPE ProLiant DL385 Gen10 Plus v2

The ProLiant DL385 Gen10 Plus v2 is a new version of the system that uses AMD’s EPYC Milan processors for machine learning and big data analytics. The dual-socket 2U server can support up to eight single-wide or three double-wide GPUs through PCIe 4.0 slots. It also comes with plenty of storage space, with room for 12 large-form-factor SAS/SATA drives, 24 small-form-factor SAS/SATA drives or 24 small-form-factor NVMe drives on the front. The server has room for an additional eight small-form- factor SAS/SATA/NVMe drives or four large-form-factor SAS/SATA drives in the middle and another four small-form-factor SAS/SATA drives in the back. It will be available on April 19.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR665

The ThinkSystem SR665 is a new dual-socket 2U server from Lenovo that is built to deliver “the next era of solution performance and [total cost of ownership] optimization” for workloads ranging from databases and virtualization to AI and high-performance computing. With support for two AMD EPYC Milan processors, the server can support up to eight single-wide or three double-wide GPUs through PCIe 4.0 slots. It comes with 32 DDR4 slots for a maximum 4 TB in memory capacity. For storage, it can either support up to 20 large-form-factor drives or 40 small-form-factor drives, with the ability to make 32 of those drives NVMe. The server is available this month.

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX5575

The ThinkAgile VX5575 is part of Lenovo’s VX 5000 series of storage servers that are optimized for VMware vSAN. The ThinkAgile VX5575 is one-node 2U server run supports AMD’s EPYC Milan processors and has been optimized to satisfy long-term, high-capacity storage requirements. As such, the server comes with 20 large-form-factor drive bays and can support up to five disk groups. With HDDs, the server can support up to 16 drives each with 16 TB of storage. With SSDs, it can support the same number of drives each with 15.36 TB of storage.