Friday, March 31st 2023
AMD Speeds Up Development of "Zen 5" to Thwart Intel Xeon "Emerald Rapids"?
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.
Source:
Tweaktown
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.
33 Comments on AMD Speeds Up Development of "Zen 5" to Thwart Intel Xeon "Emerald Rapids"?
Heck they haven't even released the 7800x3d and we are talking about Zen 5. I also don't think its likely for them to change the core count per CCD, though if they do introduce "small" cores then we might see them develop smaller CCD's with 4 small cores and then add however many CCD's they want, if they need 12 cores, add one of the weaker CCD's, or they can even do 16 big cores with 1CCD of 4 smaller cores for a total of 20 cores. Use just the big cores for gaming and use all cores for applications!
In general, CPUs require about 3 years from the start of design to shipment. Even Rocket Lake took two years to port from 10nm to 14nm, and if a newly designed CPU is ready to ship within two years of the publish of the design rules, that would be unprecedented record speed.
If anything will be released this year, it will be the Bergamo with Zen 4c. This is already announced to launch in 2023 in the AMD Accelerated Data Center Premiere (Q4 2021), which is needed to compete with Neoverse and Sierra Forrest in a market that needs MT performance over ST performance and integers over floating point.
Upgrading one component is so much financially easier compared to the whole system.
That being said, I do not believe whatsoever that the 'reading between the lines' implies Zen5 specifically.
But since TSMC has stopped shrinking SRAM, it will be necessary to change the structure where cache occupies 70% of the CCD area. Currently, the best node to manufacture Zen5 is Intel 3, which is a joke.
As for as Zen4, prices have come down substantially on CPUs and now budget motherboard options are available. DDR5 has come down enough in price so that Zen4 not working with DDR4 isn't really an issue anymore either. Laid out like that, I dont see how AMD is on their back foot...they're simultaneously competing against two, much larger opponents and still offer some of the best products around and they continue to grab enterprise market share which is the most lucrative x86 segment.
***I've read multiple leaks from different sources that claim Zen5 will have 16 cores per CCD, and that Turin will have 256 cores...weather those are Zen5 or Zen5C cores, I'm not sure, but without a node shrinks and 16 cores per CCD, we're looking at at least 192 cores based on a 12 chiplet configuration like Genoa, although if they do got to 3nm like has been claimed, they might be able to fit 16 chiplets in the Turin package and there's your 256 cores....so Zen5C could be even more, maybe 384 cores, but that's pure speculation.
Let's also remember that Zen4 and Zen5 are developed by two different teams and that Zen5 was ALREADY in development long before Zen4 was even released. So, it very well could be that Zen5 could be available that soon after Zen4. It seems more likely that Zen5 originally being released in 2024 was probably a CHOICE by AMD to ensure enough Zen4 sales rather than a constraint dictated by development or TSMC availability.