 Welcome to theCUBE's continuing coverage of AMD's fourth generation Epic launch. I've got a special guest with me today from Prowis Consulting. His name is Evan Tabard. He's a senior technical writer with Prowis. Evan, welcome. Hi, great to be here, thanks. So tell us a little bit about Prowis. What does Prowis do? Yeah, we're a consulting firm. We've been around for quite a few years based in Bellevue, Washington. And we do quite a few projects with folks from Dell to a lot of other companies and dive in. We have engineers, writers, production folks. So pretty much end to end work, doing research, testing and writing and diving into different technical topics. So you, in this case, what we're going to be talking about is some validation studies that you've done. Looking at Dell PowerEdge servers that happen to be integrating in fourth gen Epic processors from AMD. What were the specific workloads that you were focused on in this study? Yeah, this particular one was honing in on virtualization, right? Obviously it's pretty much ubiquitous in the industry. Everybody works with virtualization in one way or another. So just getting optimal performance for virtualization is critical or is critical for most businesses. So we just wanted to look a little deeper into, how do companies evaluate that? What are they going to use to make the determination for virtualization performance as it relates to their workloads? So that led us to this study where we looked at some benchmarks and then went a little deeper under the hood to see what led to the results that we saw from those benchmarks. So when you say virtualization, does that include virtual desktop infrastructure or are we just talking about virtual machines in general? No, it can include both. We looked at VMs, thinking in terms of what about database performance when you're working in VMs, all the way through to VDI and companies like healthcare organizations and so forth where it's common to roll out lots of virtual desktops and performance is critical there as well. Okay, you alluded to sort of looking under the covers to see where these performance results were coming from. I assume what you're referencing is the idea that it's not just all about the CPU when you talk about a system. Am I correct in that assumption? Yeah, absolutely. What can you tell us? Well, for companies evaluating, there's quite a bit to consider obviously, right? So they're looking at not just raw performance but power performance. So that was part of it. And then what makes up that those factors, right? So certainly CPU is critical to that but then other things come into play like the RAID controllers. So we looked a little bit there and then networking of course can be critical for configurations that are relying on good performance on their networks both in terms of bandwidth and just reducing latency overall. So interconnects as well would be a big part of that. So with PCIe Gen 5 or 5.0, pick your moniker. Right. In the infrastructure game, we're often playing a game of whack-a-mole looking for the bottlenecks, chasing the bottlenecks. PCIe 5 opens up a lot of bandwidth for memory and things like RAID controllers and NICs. I mean, is the bottleneck now just our imagination, Evan? Have we reached a point where there are bottlenecks? What did you see when you ran these tests? What were you able to stress to a point where it was saturated, if anything? Yeah, well, first of all, these are particular tests for ones that we looked at industry benchmarks and we were examining in particular to see where world records were set. And so we uncovered a few specific servers, PowerEdge servers that were pretty key there or had a lot of relieving in the category in a lot of areas. So that's what led us to then, okay, well, why is that? What's in these servers and what's responsible for that? So in a lot of cases, we saw these results even with Gen4, PCIe Gen4. So there were situations where clearly there was benefit from faster interconnects and especially NBME for RAID for supporting NBME and SSDs. But all of that just leads you to the understanding that it means it can only get better, right? So going from Gen4 to Gen4, if you're seeing great results on Gen4, then Gen5 is probably going to be blow that away. And in this case, Gen5, in this case, Gen5, you're referencing PCIe. PCIe, right, that's right. And then the same thing with Epic actually holds true. Some of the records, we saw records set for both third and fourth gen, so with Epic. So the same thing there, anywhere there's a record set on the third gen, makes us really, we're really looking forward to going back and seeing over the next few months, which of those records fall and are broken by newer generation versions of these servers once they actually ramp to the newer generation processors, based on what we're seeing for what those processors can do. Not only in, sorry, just because they're not only in terms of raw performance, but as I mentioned before, the power performance because they're very efficient and that's a really critical consideration, right? I don't think you can overstate that for companies who are looking at, have to consider expenditures and power and cooling and meeting sustainability goals and so forth. So that was really an important category in terms of what we looked at, was that power performance, not just raw performance. Yeah, I want to get back to that. That's a really good point. We should probably give credit where credit is due. Which Dell PowerEdge servers are we talking about that were tested and what did those interconnect components look like from a perspective? Yeah, so we focus primarily on a couple benchmarks that seemed most important for real world performance results for virtualization, TPCXV and VMMark 3.x. The TPCXV, that's where we saw PowerEdge R7525, R7515, they both had top scores in different categories there. That benchmark is great for looking at database workloads in particular, right? Running in virtualization settings. And then the VMMark 3.x was critical. We saw good results there for the 7525 and the R7515 as well as the R6525 in that one. And that included, sorry, just checking notes to see. Yeah, no, no, no, it's bad. Included results for power performance, as I mentioned earlier, that's where we could see that. So we saw this in a range of servers that included both 3rd Gen AMD Epic and newer 4th Gen as well, as I mentioned. The rate controllers were critical in the TPCXV. Don't think that came into play in the VMMark test, but they were definitely part of the TPCXV benchmarks. So that's where the rate controllers would make a difference, right? And in those tests, I think they're using Perk 11, so the newer Perk 12 controllers there. Again, we'd expect to see continued gains in newer benchmarks. That's what we'll be looking for over the next several months. Yeah, so I think if I've got my Dell nomenclature down, performance, what do you know? No, PowerEdge rate controller, is that right? Exactly, yeah, there you go, right? Yeah, with Broadcom, powered by Broadcom. That's right, there you go. Yeah, so isn't the Dell naming scheme there, Perk? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Back to your comment about Power, so you've had a chance to take a pretty deep look at the latest stuff coming out. You're confident that, because some of these servers are gonna be more expensive than previous generation. Now, a server is not a server, it is not a server, but some are awakening to the idea that there might be some sticker shock. You're confident that the bang for your buck, the bang for your kilowatt hour is actually going to be beneficial. We're actually making things better, faster, stronger, cheaper, more energy efficient. We're continuing on that curve. That's what I would expect to see, right? I mean, of course, can't speak to pricing without knowing where the dollars are gonna land on the servers, but I would expect to see that because you're getting gains in a couple of ways. I mean, one, if the performance increases to the point where you can run more VMs, right? Get more performance out of your VMs and run more total VMs or more VDIs, then there's obviously a good payback on your investment there. And then as we were discussing earlier, just the power performance ratio, right? So if you're bringing down your power and cooling costs, if these machines are just more efficient overall, then you should see some gains there as well. So, I think the key is looking at what's the total cost of ownership over a standard, like a three year period or something and what you're gonna get out of it for your number of sessions, the performance for those sessions and the overall efficiency of the machines. So just to be clear, with these Dell PowerEdge servers, you were able to validate world record performance, but this isn't, if you look at CPU architecture, PCIe bus architecture, memory, you know, the class of memory, the class of rate controller, the class of NIC, those were not all state of the art in terms of at least what has been recently announced, correct? Because you use PCIe 4.0, so to your point, world records with that, you've got next-gen rate controllers coming out, next-gen NICs coming out. If the motherboard was PCIe 5, with commensurate memory, all of those things are getting better. Exactly, right, I mean, you're really, you're just eliminating bandwidth constraints, latency constraints, you know, all of that should be improved. NVMe, you know, just collectively, all these things just open the doors, you know, letting more bandwidth through, reducing all the latency, those are all pieces of the puzzle, right? They come together and it's all about finding the weakest link and eliminating it, and I think we're reaching the point where we're removing the biggest constraints from the systems. Okay, so I guess, is it fair to summarize to say that with this infrastructure that you tested, you were able to set world records. During this year, I mean, over the next several months, things are just going to get faster and faster and faster and faster. That's what I would anticipate, exactly right. If they're setting world records with these machines before some of the components are, you know, the absolute latest, it seems to me, we're going to just see a continuing trend there and more and more records should fall. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how that goes, because it's already good. And I think the return on investment is pretty good there. So I think it's only going to get better as these roll out. So let me ask you a question that's a little bit, a little bit off topic. Okay. Kind of. You know, we see these gains, you know, we're all familiar with Moore's Law, we're familiar with the advancements in memory and bus architecture and everything else. We just covered Super Compute 2022 in Dallas a couple of weeks ago. And it was fascinating talking to people about advances in AI that will be possible with new architectures. No, most of these computers that are running right now are N minus one or N minus two infrastructure. You know, they're PCI-3. And maybe two generations of processors old because you don't just throw out 100,000 CPU super computing environment every 18 months. It doesn't work that way. Exactly. Do you have an opinion on this question of the qualitative versus quantitative increase in computing moving forward? And do you, I mean, do you think that this new stuff that you're starting to do tests on is going to power a fundamental shift in computing or is it just going to be more consolidation, better power consumption? Do you think there's an inflection point coming? What do you think? That's a great question. That's a hard one to answer. I mean, it's probably a little bit of both because certainly there will be better consolidation, right? But I think that the systems, it works both ways. It just allows you to do more with less, right? And you can go either direction. You can do what you're doing now on fewer machines and get better value for it or reduce your footprint or you can go the other way and say, wow, this lets us add more machines into the mix and take our level of performance from here to here, right? So it just depends on what your focus is. Certainly with areas like HPC and AI and ML, having the ability to expand what you already are capable of by adding more machines that can do more is going to be your main concern. But if you're more like a small to medium sized business and the opportunity to do what you were doing on a much smaller footprint and for lower costs, that's really your goal, right? So I think you can use this in either direction and it should pay back in a lot of dividends. Yeah, thanks for your thoughts. It's an interesting subject moving forward. Sometimes it's easy to get lost in the minutiae of the bits and bytes and bobs of all the components we're studying, but they're powering something that's going to affect effectively all of humanity as we move forward. What else, so what else do we need to consider when it comes to what you've just validated in the virtualization testing? Anything else, anything we left out? I think we had all the key points or most of them. It's really, it's just keeping in mind that it's all about the full system, the components, not the processor is obviously a key, but just removing blockages, right? Freeing up, getting rid of latency, improving bandwidth, all these things come to play and then the power performance, as I said, I keep coming back to that, but we just, in a lot of what we work on, we just see that businesses that's a really big concern for businesses and finding efficiency, right? And especially in an age of constrained budgets, that's a big deal. So it's really important to have that power performance ratio and that's one of the key things we saw that stood out to us in some of these benchmarks. So, well, it's a big deal for me. It's all good. Yeah, I live in California and I know exactly how much I pay for a kilowatt hour of electricity. I bet, yeah. The other places don't even know. Yeah. So I totally understand the power constraint question. Yeah, it's not going to get better. So anything you can do there, right? Yeah, well, Evan, this has been great. Thanks for sharing the results that prowess has come up with third-party validation that even without the latest and greatest components in all categories, Dell Powered servers are able to set world records. And I anticipate that those world records will be broken in 2023. And I expect that prowess will be part of that process. So thanks for that for the rest of us here at theCUBE. I want to thank you for joining us. Stay tuned for continuing coverage of AMD's fourth-generation Epic launch for myself and for Evan Taugher. Thanks so much for joining us.