According to a Digitimes report, AMD’s server CPU market is expected to reach 20% by the end of 2021, from a paltry 2-3% just a few years back. That’s a massive increase of 20x in just around 5-6 years. Unlike the desktop and DIY market, the server market is usually harder to penetrate for a new player. This is because OEMs tend to stick to the same chipmaker to avoid replacing the entire hardware stack and supply partners.
AMD started its Zen server journey with the 1st Gen Epyc CPUs which came with up to 32 cores on the same node, with the 2nd Gen “Rome” parts doubling the core counts to 64, all the while offering a notably higher IPC and boost clocks.
The third-gen Epyc lineup, codenamed “Milan” is expected to offer roughly 15-20% higher single-threaded performance but roughly the same multi-threaded performance, with Intel’s Ice Lake-SPs being its primary competing stack.
Although Milan has already started shipping to select clients, the actual launch is slated for an early Q1 2021, right alongside the mobile variants of the Zen 3 core.
