The AMD EPYC 7303 is a server/workstation processor with 16 cores, launched in September 2023, at an MSRP of $604. It is part of the EPYC lineup, using the Zen 3 (Milan) architecture with Socket SP3. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 32 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to two EPYC 7303 CPUs can link up in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. EPYC 7303 has 64 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.4 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.4 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the EPYC 7303 on a 7 nm production process using 8,300 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 7303, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 130 W, the EPYC 7303 consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. AMD’s processor supports DDR4 memory with an eight-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 3200 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 7303 uses a PCI-Express Gen 4 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the EPYC 7303, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.