Table of Contents
Highlights
- AMD has officially unveiled the expansion of their x86 embedded processor with the introduction of the 5th Gen AMD EPYC Embedded processors.
- The EPYC Embedded 9005 Series processors utilize the new “Zen 5c” core architecture, offering higher throughput and greater efficiency.
- Currently being sampled by early-access customers, the processors are expected to begin shipment in the second quarter of 2025.
AMD officially announced the 5th Generation of AMD EPYC Embedded Processors on March 11, 2025. Expanding its x86 embedded processor portfolio, the AMD EPYC Embedded 9005 Series CPUs are highly optimized for the embedded market.
The company claims to have balanced cutting-edge computing capabilities with purpose-built embedded features that enhance product longevity, reliability, and system resiliency and ease embedded application development.
AMD EPYC: Architecture and Core Performance
Powered by the new and proven Zen 5c architecture, AMD EPYC processors are built to deliver leadership performance and energy efficiency that will enable networking, storage, and industrial edge systems to process larger and heavier data faster and with near-perfect efficiency.
These processors are designed with support for core counts from 8 to 192 in a single socket, with an industry-leading core density that can deliver up to a 1.3x and 1.6x increase in data processing throughput for networking and storage workloads, respectively. This makes the processor ideal for network and security firewall platforms, storage systems, and industrial control applications.
The Zen 5c core architecture also offers higher throughput, delivering up to an estimated 1.3x increase in socket throughput and another 1.3x better performance/watt compared to its competition. Capacity-wise, there is up to 6TB of DDR5 memory per socket and expanded I/O Connectivity, supporting up to 1600 PCIe Gen5 lanes with CXL 2.0. This enables an expansion in storage capacity as well as high-speed data transfers for networking and storage applications.
As said by Salil Raje, Senior Vice President of Adaptive and Embedded Computing at AMD, “AI-driven network traffic, exploding data storage requirements, and the expansion of industrial edge computing are driving the demand for higher compute performance in embedded platforms.”
AMD EPYC: Purpose-Built and Application-Specific Features
The processor includes a slew of features designed to provide a robust, secure, and long-lasting platform. These features can be discussed as follows:
Extended Longevity
To meet the longer product lifecycle and operational requirements of the ever-growing market, the device comes with an extended 7-year product manufacturing support, helping system designers to ensure long-term product availability while reducing redesign and qualification efforts.
AMD also plans to extend design lifetime operation targets from 5 years on the current samples to 7 years for production SKUs. For embedded systems that are running mission-critical applications in harsh conditions, these extended design lifetime operation targets are even more necessary and critical, ultimately minimizing unplanned downtime, repairs, and costly untimely replacements.
System Resiliency and Security
The inclusion of NTB (Non-Transparent Bridging) allows for increased availability in fault-tolerant, multi-host configurations. This feature mainly enhances system redundancy and failover capabilities by enabling the exchange of data between two CPUs in an active-active configuration. This takes place via PCI Express(PCIe) and allows for continued operation, especially in case of a failure.
DRAM Flush also enhances reliability in mission-critical storage deployment scenarios by preventing the loss of data, say in the event of a power failure, by flushing it from DRAM to a non-volatile memory.
Ease of application development
The built-in Yocto framework support makes the embedded system deployments simpler. This is achieved by enabling the creation of custom Linux distributions, which are specifically tailored to the customer’s system configurations. SPDK (Storage Performance Development Kit) and DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) enhance the system performance by handling the data processes for the network and storage workloads in the user space drivers.
AMD’s EPYC Embedded 9005 Series processors are currently being sampled by early access customers, and production shipments are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2025. These processors come in the SP5 socket form factor, which is compatible with the prior generation of AMD EPYC Embedded 9004 Series, which provides customers with a simple upgrade path.
