AMD's EPYC Verano AI host CPU will reportedly use a special SB1 socket
Dynatron quietly unveils air cooler for AMD's EPYC 'Verano' CPUs aimed at AI servers.
AMD's forthcoming EPYC 9006-series Verano CPUs, tailored for AI servers, will employ a novel SB1 socket, according to a Dynatron listing, obtained by InstLatX64. This new SB1 socket is reportedly smaller than SP7 and SP8 sockets utilized by other Zen 6-based EPYC CPUs, implying distinct power and cooling necessities. Verano stands apart from traditional EPYC processors, boasting up to 72 Zen 6 cores operating at up to 5 GHz, and a substantial 24-channel LPDDR5X memory system using replaceable SOCAMM2 modules.
Positioned as a host processor for AI servers, Verano CPUs chiefly orchestrate workloads executed by AI accelerators, rather than delivering peak general-purpose performance. This specialization might account for AMD's development of the SB1 socket, rather than leveraging existing SP7 or SP8 sockets designed for processors with up to 256 or 128 cores, respectively.
The precise specifications and capabilities of SB1 remain undisclosed. However, Dynatron's preliminary SB1-4U-Active cooler suggests Verano will necessitate a powerful cooling solution, similar to that required for AMD's larger SP7 CPUs. This could imply that AMD may only release a limited number of Verano SKUs to maintain a consistent ratio of CPU cores, memory bandwidth, and host-to-accelerator connectivity per GPU, similar to Nvidia's strategy with its Grace and Vera processors.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
