[adgjlsfhk1]

that's still a major win for AMD. 2x performance per core means you need half as many servers (which is way cheaper) and all your latency bound operations happen twice as quickly. (also I'm pretty sure you can underclock the AMD system to the point where it's the same power and 50% more performance)

[geerlingguy]

At a certain density, though, power budgets come into consideration.

For 2 or 4 sockets per RU, you could be dealing with hundreds of kW per rack, and the heat that entails.

For certain deployments that could make sense. For others, a lower power, but still high core count solution could be better.

[pclmulqdq]

I would assume that undervolting and underclocking will likely drop that power consumption quite considerably.

[rewmie]

> For others, a lower power, but still high core count solution could be better.

I think OP's point is that you'd need over twice the number of the lower density cores to get the same performance, thus by going that route you'd end up needing more power to get the same computational resources.

To put it simply, with ARM you'd need a 4U to get almost the same compute as a 2U of AMD.

[wmf]

You can always solve power density by not fully populating a rack or underclocking or both. If Epyc is better it's better; it doesn't depend on density.

[geerlingguy]

It's definitely better for certain workloads.