Monday, September 11th 2023
AMD Ryzen Z1 APU Utilizes Zen 4c Cores - Discovered by Reviewer in China
A die-shot of AMD's 4 nm "Phoenix 2" monolithic APU emerged over the weekend—possibly the first example of a Team Red hybrid core processor, utilizing a combination of bog standard Zen 4 cores as well as "compacted" Zen 4c units. Phoenix 2 has been hiding in plain sight it seems, within Ryzen Z1 series APUs—that have much in common with mobile/laptop-oriented 7040U products. David Huang has posted an analysis of a Ryzen Z1 APU via his review as posted on Zhuanlan, where he investigates the intriguing combination of Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores.
As interpreted/translated by Tom's Hardware: "HWiNFO, a system information, monitoring, and diagnostics utility, confirms that the Ryzen Z1, codenamed Phoenix 2, is on the PHX2-A0 stepping. It differs from AMD's Ryzen 7040U series (Phoenix) with the PHX-A1 stepping. The Ryzen Z1 has been rumored to be a clone of the Ryzen 5 7540U for a long time now." Laptops housing the latter APU are reported to have reached retail markets in certain territories, while the Ryzen Z1 (non-Extreme) SoC has not debuted in any new devices. A cheaper ASUS ROG Ally is expected to arrive in the near future with the lesser chip.
Huang's benchmarks point to the hybrid "Phoenix 2" Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen 5 7540U APUs being better suited for casual gaming, while the traditional "Phoenix" setup with a greater TDP—in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor—can handle more modern and graphically demanding titles.
Sources:
Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz, David Huang via Zhuanlan
As interpreted/translated by Tom's Hardware: "HWiNFO, a system information, monitoring, and diagnostics utility, confirms that the Ryzen Z1, codenamed Phoenix 2, is on the PHX2-A0 stepping. It differs from AMD's Ryzen 7040U series (Phoenix) with the PHX-A1 stepping. The Ryzen Z1 has been rumored to be a clone of the Ryzen 5 7540U for a long time now." Laptops housing the latter APU are reported to have reached retail markets in certain territories, while the Ryzen Z1 (non-Extreme) SoC has not debuted in any new devices. A cheaper ASUS ROG Ally is expected to arrive in the near future with the lesser chip.
13 Comments on AMD Ryzen Z1 APU Utilizes Zen 4c Cores - Discovered by Reviewer in China
E cores from intel uses a reduced ISA compared to P cores, those Zen4c cores uses the same ISA from normal Zen4 with less L3 cache and dense libraries.
It also doesn't make any sense, why wouldn't they announce it?
That's no big deal. With limited TDP, laptop CPUs are already at best with most cores running stable at around 4ghz, only 1 or 2 cores have higher boost. Precisely these two cores are Zen4, as the IPC is identical, there will be virtually no glaring difference in this case.
While on battery of course it doesn't matter, but if that's not the case then there might still be a tangible difference, and it's still kinda shady to be mixing PHX-2 supply in with Phoenix for the same SKU (7540U) as the sources on yesterday's Phoenix-2 article suggested. At some point in the past few months I'm pretty sure I saw AMD's website advertise die size at 137mm^2 for 7540U (which is when the PHX-2 rumors started swirling like mad), but it's since been removed.
I think Phoronix is coming out with a P14s Gen 4 review but their unit is the higher end 7840U version. Really need someone to review the 7540U
I assume there will be no problem with scheduling, however, as long as the two Zen 4 cores are always listed first as Cores 0 and 1 like Intel does, and labelled as #1/#1 or #1/#2 in CPPC as usual.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be something like just 3.1Ghz on laptop CPUs. Reviews should give the final answer.
In that metric there is a significant gap between Bergamo and Genoa, of 600MHz to 1GHz for 1T.
"The Zen4c (dense) cores operate at a different frequency compared to the ‘classic’ cores, with Zen4c running at 3.5 GHz and Zen4 at 4.9 GHz. However, when both types of cores are configured to run at the same 3.2 GHz frequency, their performance becomes nearly identical. This is due to the fact that both core types utilize the same ISA and frontend. An interesting aspect is that four out of six cores are designed to run at 3.5 GHz. The Phoenix2 requires less power to attain its maximum boost clock of 4.9 GHz, with power consumption measured at a mere 12.7W."
This can function with just CPPC2 on Win10, the whole "favorite core" thing.
They even had that weird decoder wheel for the details of each cpu model number, that didn't include any kind of heterogeneous combination.
I know the differences on power and thermal constrained devices like handhelds and laptops will be tiny but that's not the point, it's like when the likes of adata or kingston change ssd components, some of the revisions are pretty close but it's still super shady