The AMD Advantage for AI and Data Centers

Wed, 19th Mar 2025

The Modern Data Center: Blending AI and General-Purpose Computing

Data centers are increasingly the engine and the lifeblood driving commerce. In today's digital economy, web servers, databases, design and analysis systems and more are essential to businesses across the globe. But data centers are no longer just processing traditional enterprise workloads. Today, traditional enterprise applications— such as real-time recommendation engines, predictive maintenance, vision and language processing and machine learning—are augmented by AI, completely transforming the data center landscape to drive more innovation and productivity. The challenge? Powering the growing demands of these AI-augmented workloads efficiently while helping ensure availability and scalability for the future.

The Changing Nature of Workloads

Modern data centers are seeing a blend of:

General-Purpose Compute: Web hosting, ERP systems, transactional databases, analytics.
Enterprise AI Tasks: AI-powered fraud detection, document translation, natural language processing.
AI Model Inference & Training: AI-driven chatbots, real-time transcription, machine learning pipelines.

The mix of these workloads means IT leaders must ensure their enterprise infrastructure is agile enough to support both traditional "run-the business" apps and AI-powered applications—without unnecessary costs or complexity.

Hardware That's Built for Modern Data Centers

To handle this evolving demand, the latest AMD EPYC CPUs are designed to excel in both traditional and AI workloads. These CPUs power a complete and diverse portfolio of systems from all of the global trusted server solutions providers (and global cloud service providers) to meet the most demanding business needs. These offerings feature:

Unparalleled x86 Core Density – Up to 192 cores per socket, with a full portfolio of CPU offerings enabling high-performance execution of both AI inference and general compute tasks of all sizes.
Leadership CPU Memory Capacity & Bandwidth – Supporting terabytes of the latest high speed, industry-standard DDR5 memory, critical for scalable traditional workloads as well as AI models that require large datasets to be kept in memory.
Scalability Without Disruption – The broadly-supported x86 architecture allows for seamless AI adoption without the lengthy code rewrites or costly software porting efforts needed to adapt enterprise code to alternative architectures.
Energy Efficiency for AI and Business Apps – AMD EPYC outperforms NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip by up to 2.75x in power efficiency.

This flexibility allows enterprises to deploy AI within their existing x86 compute infrastructure, while enabling the possibility of deploying GPU-accelerated workloads when needed.

Preparing for the Continued Growth of AI

As AI adoption grows, workloads will continue to evolve, and enterprises need hardware that won't hold them back. While GPUs are the ideal solution for training and large generative AI, most enterprise workloads using natural language processing, decision support systems, and classical machine learning can run efficiently on modern CPUs—the same infrastructure used to support the most demanding enterprise applications.

Rather than building separate, siloed infrastructure for AI and general-purpose computing, data centers must be designed for versatility—and AMD EPYC delivers the performance, efficiency, and flexibility to make this shift seamless and cost effective.

The takeaway? Your compute infrastructure must be ready to support both AI and traditional workloads—with minimal operational cost. AMD EPYC CPUs help ensure your data center is future-ready, high-performance, and ready for the next wave of AI adoption.

CPUs: The Smart Choice to Get More from GPUs

It's well known that large scale, low latency AI workloads benefit from GPU acceleration. What is often overlooked however is that for those workloads and deployments that require GPUs, selecting the right host CPU is a critical decision. 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors are the best choice for maximizing the performance of GPU-enabled clusters, providing up to 20% more throughput compared to competing x86 solutions.

High-Frequency Host Processing to Fuel AI Acceleration

5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs reach clock speeds of up to 5 GHz, offering 16% higher frequency than Intel's top turbo frequency part, the recently announced 4.3GHz Xeon 6745P. It's also substantially higher than the 3.1GHz base frequency of the Nvidia Grace Superchip. This increased clock speed enables faster data movement, task orchestration, and efficient GPU communication—key factors in high volume, low latency AI training and inference operations.

Leadership Memory Support for AI Workloads

While it is often ideal to try to fit entire models into the memory of a GPU, it is not always possible. In such cases, the server platform will be responsible for handling large quantities of data quickly and efficiently. With support for a broad range of memory configurations and capacities, as well as leadership bandwidth per socket, AMD EPYC CPUs can allow entire AI models and datasets to be stored in system memory, minimizing bottlenecks caused by storage read/write cycles. This is a crucial advantage for real-time AI applications where rapid data access is critical.

Flexibility and Scale with Leadership PCIe Support

Data movement is a potential bottleneck in GPU-accelerated workloads, but AMD EPYC processors offer up to 160 PCIe® Gen5 lanes in dual-socket configurations, enabling rapid transfers between GPUs, storage, and networking infrastructure using the industry-standard technologies of your choice. This gives AMD an edge in AI deployments and enterprise computing environments, where every millisecond counts and proprietary networking approaches can be costly and troublesome.

x86 Leadership: Enabling Enterprise AI

The enterprise market is more competitive than ever as companies face the challenge of doing more work on fixed financial and energy budgets, yet x86 architecture leadership in the data center remains. Real-world benchmarks and enterprise compatibility considerations make one thing clear: AMD EPYC processors, built on the x86 architecture, deliver impressive performance, efficiency, and broadly deployed workload compatibility compared to Arm®-based solutions, as shown below.

Performance Leadership: AMD EPYC vs. Nvidia Grace Superchip

When it comes to raw compute power, AMD EPYC processors decisively outperform Nvidia's Grace Superchip across key workloads, including general-purpose computing, database transactions, AI inference, and high-performance computing (HPC).

Benchmark Result highlights:

AMD EPYC CPUs deliver more than 2x the performance of Nvidia Grace Superchip-based systems in workloads across multiple verticals. This blog showcases several tested benchmarks with compares featuring the AMD EPYC 9004 processor family. Stay tuned for an updated blog based on results including the latest EPYC 9005 family of CPUs—which dramatically extend the performance and efficiency advantage of EPYC processors.
For database workloads (MySQL TPROC-C transactions), AMD EPYC 9004-based dual-socket systems outperform NVIDIA Grace Superchip by ~2.17x.
For video encoding (FFmpeg VP9 codec), AMD EPYC 9004 CPUs deliver ~2.90x higher throughput than Nvidia Grace.
In energy efficiency testing, based on SPECpower®, AMD EPYC 9754 CPU-based single- and dual-processor systems outperform an NVIDIA Grace Superchip system by ~2.50x and ~2.75x, respectively.

These results confirm what industry professionals have long known: x86-based AMD EPYC processors deliver leadership performance and efficiency.

Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT): A Crucial x86 Advantage

One factor supporting the outstanding performance and efficiency of many x86 systems is that the x86 architecture features Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), which allows each CPU core to execute two threads simultaneously, which can significantly increase overall throughput.

Why SMT Matters:

Improves efficiency in multi-threaded workloads like AI inference, cloud computing, and many enterprise applications.
Enables optimum resource utilization, filling processing gaps when one thread is stalled.
Enhances power efficiency, as demonstrated in independent testing where AMD EPYC CPUs delivered in the range of 30-50% more performance with SMT enabled while consuming virtually the same power.

Many Arm-based CPUs, including those from Nvidia and Ampere, lack SMT support, meaning they can leave valuable computing resources idle, which can result in lower overall efficiency, utilization and performance.

Proven Leadership and Industry Adoption

While several Arm-based CPUs are a new and relatively unproven entry, AMD EPYC has already established itself as the data center leader with:

More than 450 unique server designs across major hardware vendors.
1000+ cloud instances across the world's biggest cloud service providers.
Powering 162 of the fastest supercomputers in the world solving humanity's toughest challenges.
Powering cutting-edge Internet services infrastructures that serve billions of people each day

The Verdict: AMD EPYC is the Clear Choice for AI and Data Centers

AMD EPYC CPUs excel in CPU inference, AI hosting, and overall data center performance. Whether you're running AI on existing hardware, hosting high-performance GPU clusters, or looking for a cost-effective, power-efficient solution, AMD delivers:

Seamless AI Deployment on CPUs—Run many AI workloads efficiently without GPUs, helping save costs while maintaining high performance.
Leadership GPU Host Performance—Boost GPU cluster efficiency by up to 20% with AMD EPYC CPUs.
x86 Compatibility for Maximum Flexibility—Compared to Arm-based solutions, no expensive software porting plus compatibility across broadly deployed business critical applications enabling seamless integration.
Impressive Memory & I/O Support—Up to 6TB of DDR5 and 160 PCIe Gen5 lanes in dual socket configurations for exceptional throughput.
Leadership Energy Efficiency—SMT and optimized core designs maximize power efficiency without sacrificing performance.

As AI and high-performance computing evolve, AMD continues to lead with cutting-edge innovations. Whether you're looking to deploy AI today or future-ready your data center infrastructure, AMD EPYC CPUs are the clear, uncompromising choice.

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