AMD doesn’t have nearly the server presence that it once had. Their GPUs are prolific in that market, but their CPUs haven’t been nearly as popular. To continue to compete, and perhaps even dominate the server market, AMD will have up to 32-cores with 64-threads and 64MB of in a single Zen server CPU.
The new Zen server processors could dominate core-count, among other things
The largest die with all 64-threads will allegedly only have a TDP of 180W. Just what sort of clock-speed they have in mind is still the question of the day. Currently Intel offers up to 44-threads in their E5 range of server processors at 2.2GHz with a 145W TDP. There’s no official word as to how high it’ll scale, but the four-core unit structure, with L3 cache being the only shared resource, could very well scale to massive proportions so long as heat is controlled. It’ll be interesting to see AMD step back into the server market with new, power-efficient options that could potentially have big benefits for businesses. Even if the performance is only 80-99% of Broadwell-EP, better pricing could make them very competitive indeed.
The Piledriver-based 6300 series were at a good price/performance ratio when they were released. They were able to scale the modules accordingly to have a processor with as many as 16-cores that could compete very well (though not at all surpassing) Intel’s Sandy Bridge. Zen server processors may herald the return of AMD to the server market. With this they might be able to make a gain on market-share, no matter how small.