AMD Introduces Embedded Processors With Up To 192 Cores And Power Consumption Of Up To 500 W

AMD has released a series of embedded processors EPYC Embedded 9005 generation Turin, which are made in BGA packaging. These chips are intended for server systems in which the replacement or upgrade of the central processor is not expected – this component is soldered to the motherboard.

Image source: TechPowerUp / AMD

Like regular EPYC 9005 series chips, EPYC Embedded 9005 processors use a chiplet design, but are equipped with additional features based on the form factor and target use cases. For example, they have support for Non-Transparent Bridge (NTB), which is important for forming dual-controller platforms. NTB does not use Infinity Fabric or even CXL, but a regular PCI-Express 5.0 x16 connection. It is not designed to ensure cache coherence, but to absorb failures in different memory domains.

The EPYC Embedded 9005 series also supports DRAM dumping, which is important for power loss resilience and fast recovery. When a power loss is detected, the processor immediately dumps the memory to the NVMe storage before the machine is powered off. When the system restarts, the BIOS copies this memory dump from the NVMe storage back to DRAM.

In addition, this series of processors supports two SPI flash memory interfaces, allowing system architects to embed lightweight operating systems directly into the 64-MB SPI flash ROM, in addition to the main SPI flash memory that stores the system BIOS. This lightweight OS can act as a boot loader for operating systems on other local storage devices.

The AMD EPYC Embedded 9005 series includes processors with 8 to 192 cores, up to 512 MB of L3 cache, support for up to 160 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and up to 614 GB/s of memory bandwidth across 12 DDR5 channels.

The series includes chips not only on Zen 5 cores (up to 8 Zen 5 cores per CCD block), but also models with Zen 5c cores (up to 16 Zen 5c cores per CCD block). In the table below, you can find more information about the chip models, the number of their cores, their frequency and TDP.

It is worth noting that the models with Zen 5c cores offer a higher number of cores. Examples include the 128-core EPYC Embedded 9745, the 160-core EPYC Embedded 9845, and the 192-core EPYC Embedded 9965. In turn, the most multi-core Zen 5 processor here is the 128-core EPYC Embedded 9755.