In addition to the presentation of the Ryzen Mobile – 5000 – series and a preview of other RNDA-2 GPUs (for desktop and Notebooks), AMD also spoke briefly about the next EPYC generation alias Milan, which is to be finally presented in the current first quarter 2021.

The 3rd generation EPYC processors will use up to 64 Zen 3 cores. In a direct comparison with its competitor Intel, AMD chose a dual socket configuration consisting of two EPYC 7003 Milan with 32 Cores against two Intel Xeon Gold 6258 R with 28 cores each. This is based on the Cascade Lake architecture and represents Intel’s current Xeon generation.

AMD used a Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) as a benchmark, which should be analyzed. The system with the two Milan processors did the job 67% faster than the Intel system. Whether this is only due to the 64 Zen-3 vs. 56 Cascade Lake Nuclei is likely. But the memory interface could also play a role, because AMD supports eight memory channels for DDR4 – 3200 while Intel only has six with DDR4 – 2933 are. Without knowing the exact details of the systems and the software optimizations, such benchmarks should always be used with caution.

AMD wants the EPYC processors based on the Milan design in the first quarter 2021 to introduce. The official starting shot of the 3rd Xeon scaleable generation from Intel, which is currently in mass production as Ice Lake-SP, will be given in the same period.