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The transition of telecom core functions from purpose-built hardware to commercially available servers has introduced a number of challenges, including compute density, power efficiency, and performance optimization in a cloud environment.  Since this large-scale migration kicked off about ten years ago, we’ve seen a massive computing densification, moving from the area of 12 cores per CPU to upwards of 128 core per CPU today.  Basically, now a few servers can provide the same compute capacity that previously required an entire rack of equipment.

Figure 1. AMD EPYC CPUs Powered by Zen4 and Zen4c

Dell Technologies is enabling such dense telecom cloud core solutions with the introduction of support for the AMD EPYC™ 9654P and EPYC™ 9754 in the PowerEdge R7615, which will feature NEBS Level 3 Certification for deployments into Telecom Environments. The R7615 is a 2U, single socket 19” rackmount server and with its upcoming NEBS certification (2Q24) will provide the densest, most power-efficient telecom cloud core solution available. Paired with the increased compute density are the inclusion of twelve fast DDR5 (4800MT/s) memory channels, support for PCIe Gen5 and NVMe-based storage will deliver a dense, power-efficient cloud computing platform that has no equal in the telecom space.

NEBS Level 3 Certification is often required in the telecom space. The key feature of this certification is the resilience to provide non-throttled performance from -5C to +55C and the ability to survive a catastrophic seismic event while continuing to provide critical Cloud Core Services, providing a highly available and fault tolerant environment.

Figure 2. - Dell PowerEdge R7615 with EDSFF StorageThe PowerEdge R7615 provides the densest telecom cloud core solution available on the market today and achieves this with a single CPU (up to 128 Cores/256 Threads) per server.  This allows for deployments based on a single non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node, simplifying the challenges of deploying core services to a telecom cloud. For those that have had to deal with the planning involved in deploying to two (or more) NUMA nodes, the benefit of the R7615 is crystal clear.

The NEBS certified R7615, planned certification coming in 2Q2024, with 1 x 128c AMD EPYC 9654P will provide the same core/thread compute density as 2 NEBS certified servers of the next closest dual socket solution available today.  This provides a reduction in maintenance activities, b an estimated 56 percent reduction in power consumption, and a 40 percent performance/watt improvement.  This can result in an estimated savings of 1049€ ($1128) per year, given an average kWh cost of 0.26€ ($0.28), which was the average European cost of electricity at the time of publication. Of course, results will vary depending on many factors, including server configuration, workload, server utilization and the price of electricity.

If you’re planning to attend MWC24 and are interested in finding out more about this significant advancement in Telecom Cloud Core compute densification, stop by the AMD (2M61) and Dell Technologies (3M30) booths to see the HW and engage in further discussions.