Cloudflare posted a blog about their technology updates. Their new t10 generation severs  called Gen X already deployed across major US cities, and in the process of being shipped worldwide. Notably, for the first time, Intel is not inside. 

Cloudflare has already set up Generation X at several locations in the USA and is now starting to use it worldwide. Why it was the first time to choose servers with AMD processors, is explained for reasons of better efficiency. Also since their software mostly is CPU-limited it would scale extraordinarily well with more cores. That is why they chose AMD's Epyc 7642, which has a TDP of 225 watts and 48 cores. 

Compared with their prior server (Gen 9), it processes as much as 36% more requests while costing substantially less. Additionally, it enables a ~50% decrease in L3 cache miss rate and up to 50% decrease in NGINX p99 latency, powered by a CPU rated at 25% lower TDP (thermal design power) per core.

The enw servers are powred by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors "because they proved to be far more efficient for our customers’ workloads". Since the pendulum of technology leadership swings back and forth between providers, we wouldn’t be surprised if that changes over time.  They selected the AMD EPYC 7642 processor in a single-socket configuration for Gen X. This CPU has 48-cores (96 threads), a base clock speed of 2.4 GHz, and an L3 cache of 256 MB. While the rated power (225W) may seem high, it is lower than the combined TDP in Gen 9 servers and preferred the performance of this CPU over lower power variants. Despite AMD offering a higher core count option with 64-cores, the performance gains for our software stack and usage weren’t compelling enough.

The AMD EPYC 7642 procs are now in half a dozen Cloudflare data centers; it is considerably more powerful than a dual-socket pair of high-core count Intel processors (Skylake as well as Cascade Lake) they used in the last generation, cloudflare mentions.

Cloudflare new Gen X: Servers are no longer powered by Intel