AMD has announced that its Ryzen Threadripper Pro processor will be made available to consumers starting March 2021.
Currently the only way to get hold of a Threadripper Pro processor is inside a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation due to an exclusive agreement between the two companies.
By opening up access to the powerful desktop CPU we expect to see specialist system integrators launch their own Threadripper Pro workstations soon after.
There have been no Threadripper Pro announcements from HP, Dell or Fujitsu but we expect at least one of these major workstation manufacturers will take on the AMD CPU this year.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro shares the same core silicon as Threadripper, but there are several features that set the workstation CPU apart from its ‘consumer’ sibling. These include more memory channels (8 vs 4), higher memory capacity (2TB vs 256GB) and additional PCIe Gen4 lanes (128 vs 64).
Memory is arguably the biggest differentiator, and this will be especially important in memory intensive applications like Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) or Finite Element Analysis (FEA), which are both used heavily in the automotive and aerospace industries.
Threadripper Pro also covers a wider range of cores and 12, 16, 32 and 64-core models are all available. In comparison, consumer Threadripper comes in 24, 32 or 64-core variants, while consumer CPUs with 16-cores or less come under the AMD Ryzen brand.
AMD has not yet released pricing for the 2021 Threadripper Pro, although we will look to bring you that info as soon as it is announced.
Meanwhile, read our in-depth review of the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, where we put the 64-core Threadripper Pro through its paces.
