AMD’s EPYC data center processing family got a little more performant this week with the launch of the company’s 3D V-Cache-equipped Milan-X CPUs.

First teased late last fall, Milan-X is based on AMD’s previously announced EPYC 3 platform and are its first server processor to implement vertically stacked static RAM directly atop the processor die. The approach enables AMD to pack 768 megabytes of level-three (L3) cache into its CPUs – three times that of previous chips.

“Our latest processors with AMD V-Cache technology provide breakthrough performance for mission-critical technical computing workloads,” Dan McNamara, SVP of AMD’s server business unit, said in a statement.

Larger pools of L3 cache can improve performance by up to 66% in specific “technical computing workloads,” like computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, electric design automation, and structural analysis, the company claims.

Milan-X is available in 16-, 32-, and 64-core SKUs as a drop-in replacement for existing server platforms or from AMD partners, including Dell, Cisco, Lenovo, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Gigabyte, and Supermicro.

However, Milan-X is only a stopgap release for AMD. The chipmaker is slated to launch two new processor families based on TSMC’s 5-nanometer manufacturing process in late 2022 and early 2023.

AMD’s upcoming EPYC 4 Genoa and Bergamo chip families are AMD’s first enterprise CPUs with DDR5, PCIe Gen. 5.0, and compute express link support, and will see the chipmaker push past the 64-core barrier for the first time.

Genoa will feature up to 96 cores, while AMD’s cloud-native optimized Bergamo chips will top out at 128 cores, putting them in direct competition with Arm-based chipmaker Ampere’s Altra Max processor from 2021.

AMD gets out ahead of Intel’s Sapphire Rapids

Milan-X comes ahead of Intel's next-generation Xeon Scalable processors, code-named Sapphire Rapids, which are slated to launch during the chipmaker’s first fiscal quarter of 2022. The processors borrow more than a few core concepts from AMD’s EPYC processor family, including a modular chiplet design that’s expected to deliver significantly higher core counts than prior-generation Xeons.

Sapphire Rapids also boasts Intel’s own take on 3D V-Cache, which vertically stacks high-bandwidth memory on top of up to four processor dies.

The launch will also see Intel gain a short lead over AMD as it beats its smaller rival to market with DDR5 and PCIe Gen. 5.0 support.