AMD: Zen 3 coming late this year and 5nm CPUs with Zen 4 cores to follow in 2022
AMD will release its first processors with Zen 3 cores at the end of this year. Just like the current Zen 2 cores, these are made at 7nm. In 2022, the first CPUs will be released with Zen 4 cores, which are made at 5nm. According to AMD, everything is on track to meet the roadmap.
AMD will show the roadmap to 2022 at its Financial Analyst Day. The company says it is working closely with TSMC to produce Zen 4 processors at 5nm. AMD does not mention the name of the chip manufacturer, but is talking about the same partner who now makes the 7nm processors for AMD. That is the Taiwanese TSMC.
AMD has not yet disclosed details about the Zen 4 architecture. The company does say that it will use chip stacking techniques for several future products. AMD will combine that with the chiplet technology that is already being used. Stacking chiplets is what AMD calls X3D packaging. AMD may be using such techniques with Zen 4.
AMD already announced this week that the El Capitan supercomputer for the US government will be built with Zen 4 processors. That computer will have a computing power of 2 exaflops and should be operational at the beginning of 2023. AMD also reported using the third generation of its Infinity interconnect in that supercomputer. The new interconnect offers much higher bandwidth than the current version. The new version can connect GPUs and CPUs directly, without going through the PCI-e interface
The first processors with Zen 3 cores will be released at the end of this year. These are made on an improved version of TSMC’s 7nm process. Presumably, the new cores will come to AMD’s Epyc server processors first and will come to the desktop market later. The same happened with the Zen 2 cores.
AMD also announces that it has shipped more than 260 million Zen cores to date. AMD has been making processors with Zen cores since 2017. It is not clear how many processors are involved, AMD does not provide details about that. AMD has processors with 2 to 64 Zen cores in its range.