The AMD EPYC 9654 is a server/workstation processor with 96 cores, launched in November 2022, at an MSRP of $11805. It is part of the EPYC lineup, using the Zen 4 (Genoa) architecture with Socket SP5. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 192 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to two EPYC 9654 CPUs can link up in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. EPYC 9654 has 384 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.4 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.7 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the EPYC 9654 on a 5 nm production process using 78,840 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of TSMC. The multiplier is locked on EPYC 9654, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 360 W, the EPYC 9654 is extremely power hungry, which means you need top-notch cooling. AMD’s processor supports DDR5 memory with a twelve-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 4800 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, EPYC 9654 uses a PCI-Express Gen 5 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the EPYC 9654, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD has added support for the newer AVX2 and AVX-512 instructions, too.