New Dell EMC Servers With AMD EPYC Rome Target Emerging Workloads

'We do believe we cannot have a cookie-cutter approach where a particular server platform can serve the need of every workload,' Dell Technologies exec Ravi Pendekanti says of the new AMD-based PowerEdge servers.

Dell Technologies did a "complete redesign" of its Dell EMC PowerEdge servers with AMD's second-generation EPYC Rome processors to target emerging workloads such as high-performance computing.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company announced the five new Dell EMC PowerEdge servers on Monday, saying they leverage "every single innovation" from AMD's new server processors and set new records for virtualized database and SAP SD performance.

[Related: Forrest Norrod Outlines AMD's Plan To Fight Intel In The Data Center]

The new servers are arriving as Intel faces greater competition from AMD, which launched the new EPYC Rome processors last month, claiming a 25 percent to 50 percent lower total cost of ownership over Intel's second-generation Xeon Scalable processors that came out earlier in the year.

Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president of product management for server and infrastructure systems at Dell Technologies, said the new PowerEdge servers were optimized for emerging workloads like HPC, data analytics, software-defined storage, virtualization and virtual desktop infrastructure, with the goal of eliminating the guesswork for customers trying to weigh their options.

"We do believe we cannot have a cookie-cutter approach where a particular server platform can serve the need of every workload," he said.

The new PowerEdge servers include two single-socket options — the one-rack R6515 and two-rack R7515 — which can deliver the same level of performance as dual-socket servers while providing a better total cost of ownership, thanks to EPYC Rome's high core count, according to Dell. Targeted workloads include software-defined storage and virtualization.

Pendekanti said the PowerEdge R7515 delivers 280 percent better virtualization performance compared to Dell EMC's previous servers that ran on AMD's first-generation EPYC Naples processors. That's based on the TPCx-V benchmark, for which the R7515 set a new record.

"We think it's an important sign post for our customers," he said.

The updated PowerEdge server line also includes three dual-socket options — the R6525, R7525 and C6525 — for higher performance and density needs as well as greater flexibility for configuration, Dell said. Targeted workloads include HPC, data analytics, virtualization and software-defined storage.

The PowerEdge C6525, which is part of Dell EMC's C-series lineup that targets HPC applications, provides 202 percent better performance on the Linpack 3462 benchmark than Dell EMC's previous servers that ran on AMD's EPYC Naples," according to Pendekanti.

"HPC has become part of the mainstream today," he said.

Dell declined to provide direct comparisons between PowerEdge servers running Intel's latest Xeon Scalable processors and AMD's EPYC Rome processors.

To help foster adoption of the new servers, Dell is providing the new PowerEdge lineup through the Dell EMC Ready Solutions program, which optimizes and validates systems for certain workloads. The new solutions address HPC workloads for climate and weather modeling, life sciences research, genomics, computational chemistry and computational fluid dynamics, among others.

"Our goal is to help in moving the needle further up in [helping customers] understand what it takes to deploy their servers," Pendekanti said.