Tuesday, October 12th 2021
AMD Confirms "Zen 3" with 64 MB 3DV Cache for Q1-2022, "Zen 4" Later, PCIe Gen5 + DDR5
AMD today celebrated 5 Years of Ryzen, with a special video presentation by John Taylor, AMD Chief Marketing Officer, and Robert Hallock, Director of Technical Marketing. The company confirmed that its next Ryzen processors will come out only in Q1-2022. These processors will feature updated CPU core complex dies (CCDs) that combine the existing "Zen 3" microarchitecture with 64 MB of additional 3D Vertical Cache memory. AMD claims that this change improves performance by anywhere between 4% to 25% for games, amounting to the kind of performance uplifts you'd expect from a new processor generation.
AMD did not reveal whether the updated processors will be branded within the existing Ryzen 5000 series, or newer Ryzen 6000 series. If you remember, the "Zen+" microarchitecture enabled AMD to come up with a whole new generation, the Ryzen 2000 series, despite modest 4% IPC uplifts, albeit significant improvements to the boosting behavior, resulting in improved multi-threaded performance. What remains unclear is whether the updated "Zen 3" chips with 3DV Cache will herald a new platform, or whether these chips will be built on the existing Socket AM4 with DDR4 memory and PCI-Express Gen 4.
AMD's next truly next-generation Ryzen processor will come out within 2022, the company confirmed. Based on the new "Zen 4" microarchitecture, the company is targeting significant IPC uplifts, that will help it compete with Intel; but more importantly, introduce the new Socket AM5. An LGA package with 1,718 pins, AM5 will enable next-gen I/O. The "Zen 4" based next-gen Ryzen will indeed feature the combination of DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5, letting AMD level up to Intel on that front.
AMD's 2022 roadmap for desktop Ryzen processors looks quite similar to its 2020 roadmap. The company had initially refreshed its Ryzen 3000 series with a trio of Ryzen 3000XT SKUs that missed the mark of being viable stopgaps; but followed it up with the groundbreaking Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" series toward the end of the year. 2021 will go down as an year without any new Ryzen processor generation.
Another aspect of Socket AM5 confirmed by AMD in the presentation was backwards compatibility of coolers with Socket AM4. You'll be able to retain your AM4-compatible coolers for AM5, without needing any adapters or upgrades to your coolers' retention modules.
As for a concrete response to Intel's Hybrid CPU core designs that the company will be pioneering on the desktop PC with "Alder Lake," AMD doesn't appear to be having a hybrid core design of its own, but hinted at the possibility that it is working on a new power-management solution built from the ground up, which will probably run a homogeneous set of CPU cores across very different performance/Watt bands, while retaining a consistent ISA. AMD has given this a rather uninteresting name—Power Management Framework.
Find the AMD presentation here:
AMD did not reveal whether the updated processors will be branded within the existing Ryzen 5000 series, or newer Ryzen 6000 series. If you remember, the "Zen+" microarchitecture enabled AMD to come up with a whole new generation, the Ryzen 2000 series, despite modest 4% IPC uplifts, albeit significant improvements to the boosting behavior, resulting in improved multi-threaded performance. What remains unclear is whether the updated "Zen 3" chips with 3DV Cache will herald a new platform, or whether these chips will be built on the existing Socket AM4 with DDR4 memory and PCI-Express Gen 4.
AMD's 2022 roadmap for desktop Ryzen processors looks quite similar to its 2020 roadmap. The company had initially refreshed its Ryzen 3000 series with a trio of Ryzen 3000XT SKUs that missed the mark of being viable stopgaps; but followed it up with the groundbreaking Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" series toward the end of the year. 2021 will go down as an year without any new Ryzen processor generation.
Another aspect of Socket AM5 confirmed by AMD in the presentation was backwards compatibility of coolers with Socket AM4. You'll be able to retain your AM4-compatible coolers for AM5, without needing any adapters or upgrades to your coolers' retention modules.
As for a concrete response to Intel's Hybrid CPU core designs that the company will be pioneering on the desktop PC with "Alder Lake," AMD doesn't appear to be having a hybrid core design of its own, but hinted at the possibility that it is working on a new power-management solution built from the ground up, which will probably run a homogeneous set of CPU cores across very different performance/Watt bands, while retaining a consistent ISA. AMD has given this a rather uninteresting name—Power Management Framework.
Find the AMD presentation here:
136 Comments on AMD Confirms "Zen 3" with 64 MB 3DV Cache for Q1-2022, "Zen 4" Later, PCIe Gen5 + DDR5
In that case, they can still use the process improvement to fit more cache in. But not as many as 3x though.
[URL='https://www.extremetech.com/computing/324625-tsmc-mulls-on-chip-water-cooling-for-future-high-performance-silicon']TSMC Mulls On-Chip Water-Cooling for Future High-Performance Silicon[/URL]
Just hope those interesting chips next year won't be affected much. Most importantly, zen4.
I can't see any other reason why they will produce AM4 at all.
It would make no practical sense for AM4 to force a new chipset for Zen 3+ on a new socket then switch the socket support to DDR5 and/or another new chipset shortly after for Zen4. That's just added expensive and with supply logistics right now with chip shortages would be asinine as well.
Risking losing a CPU sale to Intel for a newer socket and low margin chipset that's still based around DDR4 isn't worth it unless Zen3+ also bumps up memory channel support beyond dual channel. If they went with triple/quad channel DDR4 it's a long shot far fetched possibility, but with chip shortages I doubt very much for that to be the case. Let's just consider x570/x570S/B550 chipset all, but confirmed for Zen3+ because odds it isn't are in the order of 10 to 1 or greater. I'd absolutely like to be wrong on this though. I really wouldn't mind at all.
No worries tomorrow we'll see a leaked rumor by AdoredTV re-hashing more or less exactly what I said above with rumor mill in full hype mode. There are only so many viable options can take with this and a Zen 3+ on a new chipset and socket for DDR4 that just dual channel and PCIE 4.0 would be viewed horribly and be a bad chess move at the same time especially with chip shortages. Some people literally wouldn't be able to afford that transition and AMD could lose a sale to Intel as a direct result of trying to force their hand on MB transition.Submerged mineral oil builds are among the most fascinating think outside the box cooling builds to consider. As a enthusiast the different angles you can take with one are a fun consideration. The ways to go about and why you might do one methodology over another is fun to contemplate. In fact you could combine liquid cooling with radiator with it. You might submerge a SFF case that can mount a radiator on the top right into a fish tank. In turn that would allow you to pump heat thru the radiator to dissapate into the air so the mineral oil ambient temperature doesn't rise as much.
One important item of note: The move to 3d cache will most likely result hotter running cores when compared with similar current offerings.
Cache is the only item being stacked in the update. To keep the die flat, the rest of the space is a layer of fill/empty silicon which will insulate the remaining elements of the cores from the IHS to some degree(s)..
Why not just make the die size larger? That would be better (cooler) but would necessitate a redesign. The second layer of cache piggybacks the substrate cache connections already in place in the current design.
Can't wait to see the results. Competition drives progress.
There are always standards that are shortlived and other that are long standing. For example DDR2 was fairly shortlived. As was GDDR4.
- AM5 "plattform" PCIe 5 able
- not clear if Zen4 is PCIe 5 able
- not clear if initial AM5 chipset is PCIe 5 able