Thursday, August 8th 2019
AMD Designing Zen 4 for 2021, Zen 3 Completes Design Phase, out in 2020
AMD in its 2nd generation EPYC processor launch event announced that it has completed the design phase of its next-generation "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture, and is currently working on its successor, the "Zen 4." AMD debuted its "Zen 2" microarchitecture with the client-segment 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor family, it made its enterprise debut with the 2nd generation EPYC. This is the first x86 CPU microarchitecture designed for the 7 nanometer silicon fabrication process, and is being built on a 7 nm DUV (deep ultraviolet) node at TSMC. It brings about double-digit percentage IPC improvements over "Zen+."
The "Zen 3" microarchitecture is designed for the next big process technology change within 7 nm, EUV (extreme ultraviolet), which allows significant increases in transistor densities, and could facilitate big improvements in energy-efficiency that could be leveraged to increase clock-speeds and performance. It could also feature new ISA instruction-sets. With "Zen 3" passing design phase, AMD will work on prototyping and testing it. The first "Zen 3" products could debut in 2020. "Zen 4" is being designed for a different era.The "Zen 4" architecture is being designed for a 2021 market debut, and will come out at a time when the 7 nm process will have matured and attained high enough volumes at TSMC for AMD to either build bigger dies (more cores per chiplet), or leverage the even more advanced 6 nm EUV node. The maturity and volumes of these sub-10 nm nodes could change the economics of the MCM approach AMD is undertaking for its EPYC processors.
The "Zen 3" microarchitecture is designed for the next big process technology change within 7 nm, EUV (extreme ultraviolet), which allows significant increases in transistor densities, and could facilitate big improvements in energy-efficiency that could be leveraged to increase clock-speeds and performance. It could also feature new ISA instruction-sets. With "Zen 3" passing design phase, AMD will work on prototyping and testing it. The first "Zen 3" products could debut in 2020. "Zen 4" is being designed for a different era.The "Zen 4" architecture is being designed for a 2021 market debut, and will come out at a time when the 7 nm process will have matured and attained high enough volumes at TSMC for AMD to either build bigger dies (more cores per chiplet), or leverage the even more advanced 6 nm EUV node. The maturity and volumes of these sub-10 nm nodes could change the economics of the MCM approach AMD is undertaking for its EPYC processors.