Cloudflare Pivots Way From Intel in Next-Gen Servers

Cloudflare is the latest company to ditch Intel, announcing it will not be using the company’s processors in its next generation servers....
Cloudflare Pivots Way From Intel in Next-Gen Servers
Written by Matt Milano

Cloudflare is the latest company to ditch Intel, announcing it will not be using the company’s processors in its next generation servers.

Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) and security services are used by some of the biggest names on the web. The company’s servers handle some 25 million HTTP requests every second. As result, Cloudflare chooses the technology it uses very carefully.

When the company evaluated processors for its 11th generation servers, it evaluated Intel, AMD and the Ampere Altra ARM architecture. Cloudflare found that Intel’s latest Ice Lake Xeon processors matched AMD in performance, but their “power consumption was several hundred watts higher per server – that’s enormous. This meant that Intel’s Performance per Watt was unattractive.”

In contrast both AMD and Ampere both made the company’s shortlist. Cloudflare ultimate went with AMD’s 64 core EPYC 7713, which provided roughly 29% better performance, while maintaining similar power consumption and thermal levels as the previous generation.

Cloudflare’s revelation is a blow to Intel as the company is struggling to regain its former dominance in the semiconductor industry.

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