AMD EPYC based offering provides best-in-class price/performance advantage for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure customers

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today at Oracle OpenWorld 2018, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the availability of the first AMD EPYC™ processor-based instance on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. With this announcement, Oracle becomes the largest public cloud provider to have a Bare Metal version on AMD EPYC™ processors¹. The AMD EPYC processor-based “E” series will lead with the bare metal, Standard “E2”, available immediately as the first instance type within the Series. At $0.03/Core hour, the AMD EPYC instance is up to 66 percent less on average per core than general purpose instances offered by the competition² and is the most cost-effective instance available on any public cloud.

“With the launch of the AMD instance, Oracle has once again demonstrated that we are focused on getting the best value and performance to our customers,” said Clay Magouyrk, senior vice president, software development, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “At greater than 269 GB/Sec, the AMD EPYC platform³, offers the highest memory bandwidth of any public cloud instance. Combined with increased performance, these cost advantages help customers maximize their IT dollars as they make the move to the cloud.”

In addition to the bare metal offering, today’s release also features the one, two, four and eight core VM Shapes. The new offering takes advantage of the industry leading core count, memory bandwidth, I/O capability^4,5,6, as well as advanced security features that come with the AMD EPYC processor. While ideal for general purpose cloud computing workloads, the offering also supports Oracle applications.

“We are delighted that Oracle is adding AMD EPYC processors to its cloud offerings. The EPYC processor provides more cores, more memory bandwidth, and outstanding stability. That translates into leadership TCO for cloud deployments². It is a perfect fit for Oracle customers running their business applications in the cloud,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Business Group, AMD. “Our work with Oracle highlights how the EPYC processors’ unique design offers cloud users a significant price/performance advantage.”

With 64 cores per server and up to 33 percent more memory channels than comparable x86 instances⁴ the Standard E2 instance is ideally suited for data analytics workloads that demand higher cores and memory bandwidth. Within the Hadoop ecosystem, AMD has partnerships with many of the leading providers including Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR and Transwarp. On a complete 10TB Terasort run the AMD instance demonstrated up to 40 percent savings in cost per Terasort as compared to other x86 instances⁷.

Within the HPC space, the higher memory bandwidth of the EPYC instance makes it a great fit for customer use cases around weather modeling, computational fluid dynamics, simulation and crash analysis in aviation and automotive manufacturing, and oil and gas exploration. On a 14M cell Fluent CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation on a winged aircraft solved on 4 Nodes, the EPYC processor-based instance demonstrated up to a 30 percent reduction in total cost, coupled with reduction in overall run times.⁸

These instances are generally available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s U.S. East-Ashburn region today, London by the end of October, and will be available in other U.S. and European regions by the end of the year.

Additional Resources

• Oracle X7 powered by AMD EPYC
• AMD EPYC on AMD.com
• Follow AMD datacenter developments on Twitter  @AMDServer

About AMD
For more than 45 years, AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies ― the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms, and the datacenter. Hundreds of millions of consumers, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research facilities around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees around the world are focused on building great products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, and Facebook and Twitter pages.

About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is an enterprise Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform. Companies of all sizes rely on Oracle Cloud to run enterprise and cloud native applications with mission-critical performance and core-to-edge security. By running both traditional and new workloads on a comprehensive cloud that includes compute, storage, networking, database, and containers, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can dramatically increase operational efficiency and lower total cost of ownership. For more information, visit  https://cloud.oracle.com/iaas. 

¹ Statement of Oracle as largest provider of bare metal cloud services has not been independently verified by AMD.

² AMD EPYC processor-powered Oracle instances are priced at $0.03 / Core Hour versus prices ranging from $0.06 to $0.1 for competing instances based on Intel from the major cloud providers.  The average core hour pricing for general purpose instances across the major cloud providers is $0.09.  The Oracle AMD pricing represents a 65% lower cost per core hour for comparable or better performance. These results have not been independently verified by AMD.

³ Oracle benchmark results. A Stream Triad result of 269.11 GB/s was obtained for OCI shape BM.Standard.E2.64 using 16 cores -- two cores per shared 8MB L3 cache (or CCX). The AMD wrapper with their optimized binary and no huge pages was used to obtain this result. These results have not been independently verified by AMD.

⁴ AMD EPYC™ 7601 processor offers up to 14% more CPU cores than an Intel Xeon Platinum 8180-based system. NAP-43

⁵ AMD EPYC™ 7601 processor offers up to 33% greater memory bandwidth than the Intel Xeon Platinum 8180. NAP-44

⁶ AMD EPYC™ offers up to [2.6X the /1.6X better] I/O density in a single socket configuration than an Intel® Xeon® SP Series Processor. NAP-56

⁷ Oracle benchmark results based upon Oracle Bare Metal Standard instance (BM.Standard 2.52).  AMD 2x AMD EPYC 7551, 32 cores per Socket @ 2.0 GHz, 512 GB DDR4 Memory, 2 x 26 G Network, Up to 1 PB of remote block Storage.  Versus Oracle Intel powered bare metal instance with 2 x Intel Skylake processors, 26 cores per Socket @ 2.0 GHz, 786 GB DDR4 Memory, 2 x 25 G Network, Up to 1 PB of remote block memory. These results have not been independently verified by AMD.

⁸ Oracle benchmark results based upon Oracle Bare Metal Standard instance (BM.Standard 2.52).  AMD 2x AMD EPYC 7551, 32 cores per Socket @ 2.0 GHz, 512 GB DDR4 Memory, 2 x 26 G Network, Up to 1 PB of remote block Storage.  Versus Oracle Intel powered bare metal instance with 2 x Intel Skylake processors, 26 cores per Socket @ 2.0 GHz, 786 GB DDR4 Memory, 2 x 25 G Network, Up to 1 PB of remote block memory. These results have not been independently verified by AMD. These results have not been independently verified by AMD.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD EPYC, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) including the collaboration with Oracle Cloud Services throughout 2018, the features, functionality, availability, and timing on products, and expected benefits of the collaboration between AMD and Oracle Cloud Services, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are commonly identified by words such as "would," "intends," "believes," "expects," "may," "will," "should," "seeks," "intends," "plans," "pro forma," "estimates," "anticipates," or the negative of these words and phrases, other variations of these words and phrases or comparable terminology. Investors are cautioned that the forward-looking statements in this document are based on current beliefs, assumptions and expectations, speak only as of the date of this document and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Such statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond AMD's control, that could cause actual results and other future events to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. Material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, without limitation, the following: Intel Corporation’s dominance of the microprocessor market and its aggressive business practices may limit AMD’s ability to compete effectively; AMD has a wafer supply agreement with GF with obligations to purchase all of its microprocessor and APU product requirements, and a certain portion of its GPU product requirements, from GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF) with limited exceptions. If GF is not able to satisfy AMD’s manufacturing requirements, its business could be adversely impacted; AMD relies on third parties to manufacture its products, and if they are unable to do so on a timely basis in sufficient quantities and using competitive technologies, AMD’s business could be materially adversely affected; failure to achieve expected manufacturing yields for AMD’s products could negatively impact its financial results; the success of AMD’s business is dependent upon its ability to introduce products on a timely basis with features and performance levels that provide value to its customers while supporting and coinciding with significant industry transitions; if AMD cannot generate sufficient revenue and operating cash flow or obtain external financing, it may face a cash shortfall and be unable to make all of its planned investments in research and development or other strategic investments; the loss of a significant customer may have a material adverse effect on AMD; AMD’s receipt of revenue from its semi-custom SoC products is dependent upon its technology being designed into third-party products and the success of those products; global economic uncertainty may adversely impact AMD’s business and operating results; the markets in which AMD’s products are sold are highly competitive; AMD may not be able to generate sufficient cash to service its debt obligations or meet its working capital requirements; AMD has a large amount of indebtedness which could adversely affect its financial position and prevent it from implementing its strategy or fulfilling its contractual obligations; the agreements governing AMD’s notes and the Secured Revolving Line of Credit impose restrictions on AMD that may adversely affect its ability to operate its business; AMD's issuance to West Coast Hitech L.P. (WCH) of warrants to purchase 75 million shares of its common stock, if and when exercised, will dilute the ownership interests of its existing stockholders, and the conversion of the 2.125% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026 may dilute the ownership interest of its existing stockholders, or may otherwise depress the price of its common stock; uncertainties involving the ordering and shipment of AMD’s products could materially adversely affect it; the demand for AMD’s products depends in part on the market conditions in the industries into which they are sold. Fluctuations in demand for AMD’s products or a market decline in any of these industries could have a material adverse effect on its results of operations; AMD’s ability to design and introduce new products in a timely manner is dependent upon third-party intellectual property; AMD depends on third-party companies for the design, manufacture and supply of motherboards, software and other computer platform components to support its business; if AMD loses Microsoft Corporation’s support for its products or other software vendors do not design and develop software to run on AMD’s products, its ability to sell its products could be materially adversely affected; and AMD’s reliance on third-party distributors and AIB partners subjects it to certain risks.  Investors are urged to review in detail the risks and uncertainties in AMD's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to AMD's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2017.