Threadripper 2

[John P. Myers]

Just announced. Compatible with current TR boards. They doubled core/thread count to 32c/64t. Available in Q3. Price is rumored at $1500

[Bryan]

Be interesting to see the comparison to the new 56t Intel that runs at 5GHz.

[John P. Myers]

Be interesting to see the comparison to the new 56t Intel that runs at 5GHz.Yeah but here's the truth to that fake 5GHz: they use a 1 horsepower, 1152 watt chiller to supply the CPU with 4C water to achieve that speed. Almost certain base clock on Intel's 28c is actually 2.7GHz

[Bryan]

Yeah but here's the truth to that fake 5GHz: they use a 1 horsepower, 1152 watt chiller to supply the CPU with 4C water to achieve that speed. Almost certain base clock on Intel's 28c is actually 2.7GHz

Yep, but it runs AVX2 & 512 much better.

[John P. Myers]

Yep, but it runs AVX2 & 512 much better.Yeah that's definitely true. Don't be shocked if it's $3000+ since they're made from $10k Xeons

[StyM]

so it's time to dump these dual sockets ?
so ryzen 3 next year is 48 cores ?
oh these core wars. :)

[Bryan]

IF R3 has 96 threads it will interesting to see if that forces Windows to start supporting more than 64 memory channels. Since there will only be a single NUMA node you won't be able to assign a BOINC instance to 2 different CPUs and run more than 64 threads. If not then it will just be a damn fine Linux machine.

[zombie67]

So Threadripper 2 is really just the same as the first gen, but with more of the building blocks on the same chip which results in more cores/threads. TR2 is not really a new architecture with any changes to the AVX situation. Do I have that right?

As for single socket vs multiple socket machines, if I were ever going to build new again, I would absolutely avoid the headache and cost of multiple CPUs. And you can't OC them either, if that is your thing.

But lately, I just can't justify new builds. You can get used dual CPU, 36 thread machines on eBay for ~$700. And that includes everything, except a GPU that crunches. No way to justify a new build that would cost ~$2500. Sure the newer CPU would do AVX better, and be a bit faster. But for that price, you could buy four of those used servers with 128 threads total.

[John P. Myers]

So Threadripper 2 is really just the same as the first gen, but with more of the building blocks on the same chip which results in more cores/threads. TR2 is not really a new architecture with any changes to the AVX situation. Do I have that right?
Yep that's right. Not a new uArch, just a tweaked design. Expect 10% faster per core just like the newer Ryzens.

BTW You're right about the used systems being a better value, but just to throw it out there: the next EPYCs will be 64c/128t but they're a ways off yet

[John P. Myers]

Testing today showed TR2 can run at 4.2GHz on all 64 threads using nothing more than an AIO liquid cooler. Seems to be called the 2990X. There's also a 2970X which is 24c/48t.

[scole of TSBT]

I read Threadripper 2 CPUs will still only have 4 memory channels and there's some speculation about how the memory access will work. The discussion seems to center around the CPUs having 4 separate units and how they will share or utilize the 4 memory channels. I was hoping they would boost the channels to 8 like their Epyc CPUs.

[John P. Myers]

Yeah i'm curious about that too. But a benchmark just leaked out showing the 2990X is 53% faster than Intel's i9-7980XE which costs $200 more, so something seems to be working pretty well