AMD's next-gen EPYC Zen 5 processor family seems to be nearing launch status—late last week, momomo_us uncovered an unnamed motherboard's datasheet; this particular model will accommodate a single 9000-series CPU—with a maximum 400 W TDP—via an SP5 socket. 500 W and 600 W limits have been divulged (via leaks) in the past, so the 400 W spec could be an error or a: "legitimate compatibility issue with the motherboard, though 400 Watts would be in character with high-end Zen 4 SP5 motherboards," according to Tom's Hardware analysis.

AMD's current-gen "Zen 4" based EPYC "Genoa" processor family—sporting up to 96-cores/192-threads—is somewhat limited by its DDR5 support transfer rates of up to 4800 MT/s. The latest leak suggests that "Turin" is upgraded quite nicely in this area—when compared to predecessors—the SP5 board specs indicate DDR5 speeds of up to 6000 MT/s with 4 TB of RAM. December 2023 reports pointed to "Zen 5c" variants featuring (max.) 192-core/384-thread configurations, while larger "Zen 5" models are believed to be "modestly" specced with up to 128-cores and 256-threads. AMD has not settled on an official release date for its EPYC "Turin" 9000-series processors, but a loose launch window is expected "later in 2024" based on timeframes presented within product roadmaps.

AMD is reportedly building its upcoming "Zen 5" and "Zen 5c" CPU Core Dies (CCDs) on two different foundry nodes, a report by Chinese publication UDN, claims. The Zen 5 CCD powering the upcoming Ryzen "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, "Fire Range" mobile processors, and EPYC "Turin" server processors, will be reportedly built on the 4 nm EUV foundry node, a slightly more advanced node than the current 5 nm EUV the company is building "Zen 4" CCDs on. The "Zen 5c" CCD, or the chiplet with purely "Zen 5c" cores in a high density configuration; on the other hand, will be built on an even more advanced 3 nm EUV foundry node, the report says. Both CCDs will go into mass production in Q2-2024, with product launches expected across the second half of the year.

The "Zen 5c" chiplet has a mammoth 32 cores spread across two CCXs of 16 cores, each. Each CCX has 16 cores sharing a 32 MB L3 cache. It is to cram these 32 cores, each with 1 MB of L2 cache; and a total of 64 MB of L3 cache, that AMD could be turning to the 3 nm foundry node. Another reason could be voltages. If "Zen 4c" is anything to go by, the "Zen 5c" core is a highly compacted variant of "Zen 5," which operates at a lower voltage band than its larger sibling, without any change in IPC or instruction sets. The decision to go with 3 nm could be a move aimed at increasing clock speeds at those lower voltages, in a bid to generationally improve performance using clock speeds, besides IPC and core count. The EPYC processor with "Zen 5c" chiplets will feature no more than six such large CCDs, for a maximum core count of 192. The regular "Zen 5" CCD has just 8 cores in a single CCX, with 32 MB of L3 cache shared among the cores; and TSV provision for 3D Vertical Cache, to increase the L3 cache in special variants.

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AMD's upcoming server processor, the 5th Gen EPYC "Turin," has been pictured as an engineering sample is probably being evaluated by the company's data-center or cloud customers. The processor has a mammoth core-count of 192-core/384-thread in its high-density cloud-focused variant that uses "Zen 5c" CPU cores. Its regular version that uses larger "Zen 5" cores that can sustain higher clock speeds, also comes with a fairly high core-count of 128-core/256-thread, up from the 96-core/192-thread of the "Zen 4" based EPYC "Genoa."

The EPYC "Turin" server processor based on "Zen 5" comes with an updated sIOD (server I/O die), surrounded by as many as 16 CCDs (CPU complex dies). AMD is expected to build these CCDs on the TSMC N4P foundry node, which is a more advanced version of the TSMC N4 node the company currently uses for its "Phoenix" client processors, and the TSMC N5 node it uses for its "Zen 4" CCD. TSMC claims that the N4P node offers an up to 22% improvement in power efficiency over N5, as well as a 6% increase in transistor density. Each of the "Zen 5" CCDs is confirmed to have 8 CPU cores sharing 32 MB L3 cache memory. A total of 16 such CCDs add up to the processor's 128-core/256-thread number. The high-density "Turin" meant for cloud data-centers, is a whole different beast.

A couple of slides from AMD's internal presentation were leaked to the web by Moore's Law is Dead, referencing what's allegedly the next-generation "Zen 5" microarchitecture. Internally, the performance variant of the "Zen 5" core is referred to as "Nirvana," and the CCD chiplet (CPU core die) based on "Nirvana" cores, is codenamed "Eldora." These CCDs will make up either the company's Ryzen "Granite Ridge" desktop processors, or EPYC "Turin" server processors. The cores themselves could also be part of the company's next-generation mobile processors, as part of heterogenous CCXs (CPU core complex), next to "Zen 5c" low-power cores.

In broad strokes, AMD describes "Zen 5" as introducing a 10% to 15% IPC increase over the current "Zen 4." The core will feature a larger 48 KB L1D cache, compared to the current 32 KB. As for the core itself, it features an 8-wide dispatch from the micro-op queue, compared to the 6-wide dispatch of "Zen 4." The integer execution stage gets 6 ALUs, compared to the current 4. The floating point unit gets FP-512 capabilities. Perhaps the biggest announcement is that AMD has increased the maximum cores per CCX from 8 to 16. At this point we don't know if it means that "Eldora" CCD will have 16 cores, or whether it means that the cloud-specific CCD with 16 "Zen 5c" cores will have 16 cores within a single CCX, rather than spread across two CCXs with smaller L3 caches. AMD is leveraging the TSMC 4 nm EUV node for "Eldora," the mobile processor based on "Zen 5" could be based on the more advanced TSMC 3 nm EUV node.

In no mood to cede its market-share growth to Intel, AMD has reportedly decided to accelerate the development of its next-generation "Zen 5" microarchitecture for debut within 2023. In its mid-2022 presentations, AMD had publicly given "Zen 5" a 2024 release date. This is part of a reading-in-between the lines for a recent GIGABYTE press release announcing server platforms powered by relatively low-cost Ryzen desktop processors. The specific sentence from that release reads "The next generation of AMD Ryzen desktop processors that will come out later this year will also be supported on this AM5 platform, so customers who purchase these servers today have the opportunity to upgrade to the Ryzen 7000 series successor."

While the GIGABYTE press release speaks of a next-generation Ryzen desktop processor, it stands to reason that it is referencing an early release of "Zen 5," and since AMD shares the CPU complex dies (CCDs) between its Ryzen client and EPYC server processors, the company is looking at a two-pronged upgrade to its processor lineup, with its next-generation EPYC "Turin" processor competing with Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids," and Ryzen "Granite Ridge" desktop processors taking on Intel's Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" and "Meteor Lake-S" desktop processors. It is rumored that "Zen 5" is being designed for the TSMC 3 nm node, and could see an increase in CPU core count per CCD, up from the present 8. TSMC 3 nm node goes into commercial mass-production in the first half of 2023 as the TSMC N3 node, with a refined N3E node slated for the second half of the year.

AMD in its Financial Analyst Day 2022 presentation, unveiled its next-generation "Zen 5" CPU microarchitecture. The company's latest CPU microarchitecture roadmap also confirms that variants of its "Zen 4" CCDs with 3D Vertical Cache (3DV Cache) are very much in the works, and there will be variants of the EPYC "Genoa" processors with 3DV Cache, besides standard ones.

AMD stated that it completed the design goal of the current "Zen 3" architecture, by building it on both 7 nm and 6 nm nodes (the latter being the client "Rembrandt" processor). The new "Zen 4" architecture will debut on the 5 nm node (TSMC N5), and could see a similar optical shrink to the newer 4 nm node somewhere down the line, although AMD wouldn't specify whether it's on the enterprise segment, or client. The next-gen "Zen 5" architecture will debut on 4 nm, and see an optical shrink to 3 nm on some future product.