As part of my various end-of-year benchmarks, recently I looked at the Linux LTS kernel performance on AMD EPYC 9005 over the past year, the AMD EPYC Milan-X performance over the past four years, and various other performance comparisons over time to look the evolution of the Linux software performance. Another run I had carried out was looking at the AMD EPYC 8004 “Siena” series since its launch just over two years ago. Here is a look at how an up-to-date Linux software stack can deliver some additional performance gains for these energy efficiency and cost-optimized server processors.
The AMD EPYC 8004 “Siena” series remains an interesting and viable option for those pursuing a 1P server platform focused on energy efficiency and TCO. With single socket CPU options up to 64 cores / 128 threads and six memory channels, it’s a nice balance for more cost optimized server deployments. If you invested in AMD EPYC 8004 server(s) since the September 2023 launch, there’s the potential of squeezing even more performance out of Siena via an up-to-date Linux software stack.
Some end-of-year benchmark comparisons I did on an AMD EPYC 8534P 64-core looked at the performance benchmarks I ran for launch day back in 2023 compared to now with an up-to-date Ubuntu 25.10 installation and using the new Linux 6.18 LTS kernel. This is also useful for getting an idea of roughly what to expect when Ubuntu 26.04 LTS rolls out in a few months. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will be bringing Linux 6.20~7.0 and with the performance improvements in 6.19 and likely more for that upcoming 6.20~7.0 cycle, hopefully there will be even more performance gains to report for Siena come the April release.
Back for the launch day testing of Siena I ran the AMD EPYC 8534P on a Ubuntu 23.10 development snapshot as the up-to-date environment at the time with the Linux 6.5 kernel and GCC 13.2 compiler and other defaults. Now for the December 2025 look was Ubuntu 25.10 with the GCC 15.2 compiler and other software upgrades plus the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel.
