Partner Content: Creating change through the next generation of computing

The relentless march of technological change is something that we have all become used to. It is fair to say that many of us even take it for granted. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is no longer the case. Digital technology has been fundamental in ensuring that, even as much of the world shut down, a great deal of businesses and organisations could continue not only to function but also create meaningful value.

Supporting digital transformation

There has been no mistaking the acceleration toward digitally transformed business models as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having made changes to cope with the immediate impacts, businesses are now thinking about long term innovation.

To advance businesses need a data centre that can successfully support capabilities such as AI and machine learning workloads, complex virtualisation and high performance computing. The amount of data being created in today's connected world is growing at an exponential rate. Data centre operational cost efficiency, space optimisation, and faster application response times are all key for businesses who want to do more faster with less. If businesses are to use this moment as a catalyst for further innovation, they need access to an IT infrastructure that is flexible, powerful, efficient, secure and simple to manage. For help understanding how AMD EPYC processors set a new standard for the modern data centre, visit the Tech Data Channel Academy to learn how businesses can achieve these requirements.

It's wild out there

Security is also constantly top of mind for organisations. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport's 2020 Cyber Security Breaches Survey showed that 32 percent of UK companies are attacked at least once a week. Security threats have increased due the disruption caused by COVID-19, increasing the number of attacks against businesses and public sector organisations.

Defending your CPU, applications and data has to start at the core. Data centres need to constantly adapt so they can securely meet current and future workload demands.  2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors come with Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and Secure Encrypted Virtualisation (SEV). SME uses a single key, generated by the AMD Secure Processor at boot, to encrypt all system memory and prevent attackers from reading it. Meanwhile, SEV extends that feature by using keys to cryptographically isolate individual virtual machines and the hypervisor from one another, with the keys being managed by the AMD Secure Processor. This prevents an attacker with hypervisor administrator access or a compromised virtual machine account from reading encrypted data if they try to read the memory of other virtual machines. By providing fast and stable Data-In-Use encryption capability, AMD EPYC helps users compliment their Data-in-Flight and Data-at-Rest strategies to provide advanced protection for their valuable data.

Turning the virtual into reality

Organisations are implementing densely virtualised environments to help them drive more efficiency from their data centre. Traditional infrastructures, with their independent systems, require too much management and create too much complexity for the needs of the modern business. Hyperconverged Infrastructures (HCI) are far more appropriate for enterprises who want the simplicity and scalability of the cloud whilst still getting the performance of on-premise infrastructure.

There are three things to consider for businesses moving to HCI environments. Firstly they need to ensure that their computing processors can support the densely virtualised environments that are fundamental to HCI. Secondly, given the potential data transfer risk of moving to a software-defined virtualised environment, they need to ensure that they are protected by advanced security features. Finally, organisations need to ensure they are achieving the performance and efficiency gains that were the purpose of moving to an HCI environment in the first place.

2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors can help achieve these aims by underpinning a flexible, powerful, efficient and simple to manage IT infrastructure with security built in. This is thanks to the ‘no compromise' single socket processor, delivering up to 64 processing cores, and the aforementioned SEV features for security.

AMD's Infinity Fabric pushes the boundaries of x86 performance, with a new approach to CPU architecture and a leadership interconnect, that accelerates performance for organisations tackling accelerated computation, fast access to data, workload mobility and changing security concerns through the construction of the modern data centre. The revolutionary multi-tie design allows independent paths for innovation, moving away from a monolithic design and decoupling development, allowing for the use of the best processes and incremental improvements that guarantee organisations have the newest technology in their data centre first.

High performance progress

High Performance Computing (HPC) represents one of the most exciting areas of technology when it comes to affecting real world societal change. In fields as diverse as medicine, climate science and manufacturing, HPC has the potential to accelerate the time to major breakthroughs for some of our biggest global challenges.

For example, AMD recently announced a partnership with Penguin Computing, New York University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to deliver seven petaflops of HPC  compute power to better enable research into COVID-19. From genomics, vaccine development, transmission science and modelling, the variety of different applications is emblematic of the value HPC environments can deliver through their performance and scalability.

AMD's EPYC processors deliver the superior performance, I/O, bandwidth and industry-leading interconnect speeds needed for HPC. As well as the high performance and core counts offered, EPYC also supports PCIe 4.0, doubling the bandwidth available from PCIe 3.0. Taking all of these performance features together, it is no wonder that AMD holds over 170 world records for big data, cloud and virtualisation, HPC and software defined infrastructure and enterprise computing.

From businesses trying to operate more efficiently and quickly to organisations at the bleeding edge of research solving major global issues, all of them require a flexible, scalable and secure infrastructure to facilitate their work. With security built in, support for densely virtual HCI environments and capacity to drive HPC workloads, the AMD EPYC processors provide the most effective way to manage overheads, provide high performance and keep up with the digital evolution of working practices and organisational collaboration.

Discover how AMD EPYC processors set a new standard for the modern data centre by logging in to the Tech Data Channel Academy here.

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