AMD introduced EPYC 9005 server processors: up to 128 Zen 5 cores for Turin Classic and up to 192 Zen 5c cores for Turin Dense

At the Advancing AI event, Lisa Su not only celebrates her tenth anniversary as head of AMD, but also introduces new products. For corporate users, the company has developed Ryzen AI Pro 300 processors, and for data centers AMD has prepared new server processors of the EPYC 9005 series.

Image source: AMD

The fifth generation of AMD EPYC processors, codenamed Turin, is designed to compete with Intel Xeon 6900P (Granite Rapids) and Xeon 6700E (Sierra Forest) chips. That is why AMD, as part of the EPYC 9005 series, released the Turin Classic models, offering up to 128 regular Zen 5 cores with support for up to 256 virtual threads, and Turin Dense, which are energy-efficient processors carrying up to 192 Zen 5c cores with support for up to 384 threads.

The structure of Turin Classic processors can be understood from the image provided by AMD. These chips use up to 16 CCD crystals, arranged in two rows, each with eight cores. In the center there is an I/O Die with input/output interfaces.

Turin Classic

CCD blocks of Turin Classic processors are manufactured using TSMC’s 4nm process technology.

Turin Dense

The CCD blocks of Turin Dense are larger, they have 16 cores each, they are combined into clusters of three, and the total number of CCDs is 12 pieces. The CCDs of these processors are manufactured using the 3nm N3 process technology from the same TSMC.

AMD initially wanted to provide Turin processors with support for DDR5-6000 memory, but at the last minute it decided that it was better to provide support for the faster 12-channel DDR5-6400 memory.

According to AMD, the new EPYC 9005 series processors provide a 17% increase in IPC (instructions executed per clock) compared to its predecessors in the Genoa series. For HPC and AI tasks, the performance increase is up to 37% compared to predecessors.

The EPYC 9005 series consists of 27 processor models (22 Turin Classic models with Zen 5 cores, the rest – Turin Dense with Zen 5c cores). The oldest Turin Dense model is the 192-core EPYC 9965, operating at a frequency of 2.25 to 3.7 GHz, having 384 MB of cache memory and a TDP of 500 W. The chip is valued by the company at $14,813. The oldest Turin Classic model based on conventional Zen 5 cores – EPYC 9755 – has 128 cores, operates at frequencies from 2.7 to 4.1 GHz, has 512 MB of cache memory and a TDP of 500 W . The cost of the processor is $12,984. The youngest model in the series is the 8-core EPYC 9015 on regular Zen 5 cores, with a frequency of 3.6 to 4.1 GHz and a TDP of 125 W. Its cost is $527.

AMD Turin Classic and Turin Dense are designed for use with the SP5 processor socket and are compatible with the same platforms that power the current EPYC Genoa processors based on the Zen 4 architecture.

The EPYC 9005 claims support for single- and dual-processor configurations, up to a total of 160 PCIe 5.0 lanes, CLX 2.0, as well as support for AVX-512 instructions with a full 512-bit data link.

As part of the AMD presentation, it was also announced that the market share of EPYC processors has increased to 34%. Over 350 OEM platforms and 950 cloud services use AMD processors.