A few days ago we covered the AMD Milan-X, Instinct MI200, and Genoa/ Bergamo event. There is even a video going over all of the headlines. One big disclosure was that Facebook (now Meta) is using AMD EPYC processors. At OCP Summit 2021, we now have the details on those processors.
Facebook Meta AMD EPYC North Dome Details
The Meta platform is a single socket platform that fits into the Yosemite V2 platform. Facebook evolved its hosting single socket nodes from Yosemite V1 to V2 and even to V3. At OCP Summit, Meta disclosed the North Dome platform that puts an AMD EPYC 7003 processor into a sled originally designed for Intel Xeon D CPUs.
The Meta North Dome node has six channels of DDR4 out of the eight that the mainstream CPUs offer. There are two M.2 slots, one M.2 2280 and one 22110 slots In addition to this, the node has PCIe Gen4 lanes whereas the original Yosemite V2 nodes were PCIe Gen3.
Here is the North Dome block diagram that has the key components and connectivity for the platform.
One of the big challenges AMD notes was that it had to scale its CPU down to a maximum of 95W TDP. One has to remember that Yosemite V2 was designed to be CPU agnostic, but the original launch platform was using a Xeon D-2300 series part so there is only so much TDP that Meta’s existing chassis design could handle.
At the show, AMD and Meta said they collaborated to get a chipset design that fit the power budget but also the feature needs of the platform. The result is a 36 core 95W TDP CPU.
The presentation in-person largely followed these slides with some basic overview parts that we have covered previously on STH.
Final Words
Now we have a good sense of what the AMD win at Meta that was hinted at by Dr. Lisa Su earlier this week was. It appears as though AMD managed to give Meta a replacement in a Xeon-D like power envelope but with more cores. We will also note, this is a higher core count than the Intel Xeon Platinum 8321HC 26C 88W TDP part that Intel made custom for Meta’s Yosemite V3 servers. It may not seem like a lot, but adding PCIe Gen4 and 10 cores while only adding 7W of TDP is a big deal.
@Patrick, any idea of the clocks on that 95W 36 core beauty?
@emerth:
Model is 7D13, 0.9Ghz base, 6x6core chiplets, doesn’t work in any EPYC boards without injecting custom AGESA code, then the 29x PCIe lanes probably prevents you from using it in anything but the Facebook platform
Would love to see OVH or similar take these off Meta’s hands once they become surplus to requirements and make a product out of them. Slow and steady wins the race for some use-cases.