On Energy Efficiency Day 2022, AMD shares how the company is helping its customers and end-users reduce their energy use and GHG emissions

On Energy Efficiency Day 2022, AMD shares how the company is helping its customers and end-users reduce their energy use and GHG emissions

Originally published in AMD 2021-22 Corporate Responsibility Report

At AMD, we strive to create products that improve people’s lives and help our customers and end-users reduce their own energy use and GHG emissions. We collaborate closely with our customers and partners on product design and system-level optimizations to advance environmental sustainability, including by minimizing environmental impacts and energy use.

Maximizing the computing performance delivered per watt of energy consumed is a vital aspect of our business strategy. Our products’ cutting-edge chip architecture, design and power management features have resulted in significant energy efficiency gains, and we have the track record to prove it: we achieved a 31.7x increase in performance per watt for processors in mobile devices, for example, exceeding the AMD 25x20 Energy Efficiency goal (2014-2020).1

Today, AMD RyzenTM processors are continuing to help deliver energy-efficient laptops without compromise, including our Ryzen 5800U processors with up to 43 percent better power efficiency than Energy Star 8.0 requirements.2 An enterprise that upgrades 10,000 PCs from four-year-old Ryzen 2500U processors to new Ryzen 5800U processors would save approximately 272,000 kWh of electricity and 183 metric tons of CO2e, equivalent to 3,187 tree seedlings grown for 10 years.3

In the data center, AMD EPYC™ processors power the most energy-efficient x86 servers, delivering exceptional performance and reducing energy costs.4 AMD EPYC processors drive energy efficiencies by meeting application performance demands with fewer physical servers than competitive solutions, which can result in a reduced data center footprint and associated energy use and GHG emissions. For example, to deliver 1200 virtual machines, it takes an estimated 10 2P AMD EPYC™ 7713-powered servers or 15 2P Intel® Platinum 8380-based servers. The AMD solution takes an estimated 33 percent fewer servers, uses approximately 32 percent less power and provides estimated GHG emission savings of about 70 metric tons of CO2e, equivalent to the carbon sequestration of 28 acres of forest in the United States.5

Energy efficiency is paramount when it comes to supercomputing, which is the concentration of processing power across multiple, parallel computers. The Green500 list ranks the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. The June 2022 update showed AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct accelerators power the most efficient supercomputers in the world, including four of the top five, eight of the top ten, and 17 of the top 20 most efficient. The Frontier test and development system (TDS) supercomputer secured the top spot in the Green500 June 2022 update based on optimized 3rd generation AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct MI250x accelerators.

Our continued ambitions are reflected in the AMD goal of a 30x increase by 2025 in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators powering servers for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence training. In 2021, AMD achieved a 3.9x increase. Nearly midway through 2022, we are on track toward achieving our goal, having reached a 6.8x improvement in energy efficiency compared to 2020 using an accelerated compute node powered by one 3rd generation AMD EPYC CPU and four AMD Instinct MI250x GPUs.6 Our goal utilizes a measurement methodology validated by renowned compute energy efficiency researcher and author, Dr. Jonathan Koomey.

“The energy efficiency goal set by AMD for accelerated compute nodes used for AI training and High-Performance Computing fully reflects modern workloads, representative operating behaviors and accurate benchmarking methodology.”

Dr. Jonathan Koomey, President, Koomey Analytics

For more information on environmental sustainability programs and initiatives at AMD, please visit our website.

For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, LinkedIn and Twitter pages.