What looks like an engineering sample of the upcoming flagship processor of the AMD EPYC Genoa-X server range has been put on sale on Chinese selling platform Goofish, offering us a close look at what we can expect from the latest range of AMD processors when they finally arrive later this year.
The processor in question, an EPYC 9684X, is the expect sequel to the AMD Milan-X chips from last year, and according to the listing, the new processor sports 96 Zen 4 cores, making it most likely to be the flagship chip, replacing the EPYC 7773X, and upgrading it significantly from the 7773X’s 64 cores. The number of threads is stated to be 192, but also included is 1,152MB of L3 cache, another significant upgrade. AMD has used its 3D V-Cache tech to boost the L3 cache above 1GB, and the amount of V-Cache on the 9684X alone, if the listing is accurate, will be more than the entire L3 cache on the previous Milan-X chips.
The wattage has seen a small increase, with the EPYC 9684X being mentioned to be 400W, with the lower chips being limited to 320W, meaning the jump here is a bit smaller than in other areas. The TDP (thermal design power) of the EPYC 9684X is due to be around 43% higher than that of the EPYC 7773X.
Unfortunately, no shots of the EPYC 9684X were included in the listing (the image above comes from Goofish), but the chip in question has been mentioned by noted hardware leaker YuuKi_AnS as the flagship chip for the upcoming Genoa-X range.
While this processor in particular will only be of use in big data centers, it’s always interesting to see what the big chip manufacturers are putting out for the biggest and baddest setups around. The Genoa-X range is likely to offer a huge boost in power for those latency-sensitive workloads. These processors are due to launch later in 2023, but AMD has not yet specified when that will be.