AMD Daytona Reference System - 2P Epyc 7742
Showcasing the potential of Epyc 7002 Series, AMD provided select press with a reference platform known as Daytona, following on from the Grandstand system for Epyc 7001 Series.
Daytona represents a standard-sized, dual-socket 2U server commonly found in datacenter space, and AMD says that it is designed as a customer reference platform, from the ground up, to support the new features of Epyc 7002 Series processors, so let's take a closer peek.
Key improvements over the last generation are support for Epyc 7002 Series processors running with up to 225W TDP each, provision for memory operating at 3,200MHz, and the capability to run 128 expansion lanes at PCIe 4.0 speeds, for double the bandwidth of the previous generation.
The system is supplied as a turnkey solution equipped with two top-of-the-range Epyc 7742 processors housing 64 cores and 128 threads each. This is the first time that 256 x86 CPU threads have been put into a standard 2P box.
Micron supplies 512GB of RDIMM memory - 16 modules of 32GB capacity - rated at the qualified DDR4-3200 speed.
Micron is also the supplier of a 256GB 1100 SATA SSD and a further six 9300 NVMe 3.84GB drives for super-fast, high-capacity storage. It's a shame that, at the time of implementation, no server-class PCIe 4.0 drives are available.
Mellanox gets in on the act with a ConnectX-4 NIC, with a ConnectX-5 PCIe 4.0 100Gbit NIC being provided at a later date for evaluation.
Installed with Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo), which we'll update to version 20 LTS in due course, this server represents around $25,000 of cutting-edge hardware.