AMD's 4th Generation EPYC 'Genoa' and 'Bergamo' processors boast formidable performance, core counts, and expandability, but they're inherently more expensive than the company's 3rd Generation EPYC 'Milan' CPUs and platforms due to DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen5 support, and other factors. More critically, there are customers who need cheaper machines and/or already run hundreds or thousands of 3rd Gen EPYC-based machines and do not want to upgrade. AMD on Thursday extended Milan availability to 2026 and added six new SKUs to address these clients.
AMD's EPYC 7003-series processors are based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture and feature up to 64 cores, an eight-channel DDR4 memory subsystem, and 128-lane PCIe 4.0 connectivity. These CPUs provide a good value since DDR4 is still considerably cheaper than DDR5 and Milan-powered machines only need up to eight modules per socket. It's also easier to achieve great signal integrity with PCIe 4.0 connectivity without using expensive retimers, which lowers the cost of motherboards. Combined, the net result is much more affordable servers.
Apparently, for many of AMD customers, 64 cores, DDR4 memory, and PCIe 4.0 connectivity is good enough. That's why AMD is extending availability of Milan to 2026 and adding six new processors with 8, 16, 48, and 56 cores (with double the number of threads).
"Today's CIOs and IT decision makers leveraging aging data center infrastructure need a straightforward, seamless upgrade path toward next-generation technologies at a pace that meets their needs," said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. "We have seen a clear opportunity to give our customers more options that bring the leadership performance and efficiency of EPYC to less technically demanding but still business critical workloads. Servers powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPUs deliver impressive price-performance on widely deployed, cost effective and proven mainstream technologies."
AMD EPYC 7003 (Milan) Specifications
When AMD released the EPYC 7003-series CPU platform in 2021, it positioned it for a wide range of applications, from general cloud servers and to high-performance computing machines. Moving forward, AMD will position the platform and processors as being fit for essential business infrastructure, value servers that still offer quite formidable performance and functionality.
AMD said that OEMs including Cisco, Dell, Gigabyte, HPE, Lenovo, and Supermicro will offer solutions tailored for new realities, which are going to be cheaper than original servers based on Milan. Those should all become available in the coming months.
