With Zen 3 well into production, AMD is setting it’s sights on the next step in its CPU production pipeline, featuring a new, more powerful 5nm architecture.
With the success of CPUs like the Ryzen 9 5900X, AMD is now well into development of its next generation of processors, using the new AMD Zen 4 architecture. AMD Zen 4 promises improved performance over both previous generation Zen 3 chips and archrival Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors. This is especially true in the latter case where Intel’s processors are still on a 10nm process, giving AMD Zen 4 performance a major head start thanks to its 5nm design. It isn’t a complete apples-to-apples comparison though, since Intel is spicing things up a bit and introducing their first attempt at big. LITTLE architecture, based on the design pioneered by ARM and adopted most recently in the Apple M1 chip. AMD Zen 4 doesn’t appear to be going that route, instead focusing on using TMSC’s new 5nm process to improve instructions-per-clock and possibly upping the core count on their flagship processors beyond the 16 typically seen on AMD’s high end consumer chips. It wouldn’t be a surprise if AMD has shaken up its production roadmap somewhat even before the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 caused major disruptions in supply chains. Rumors in 2019 suggested a 2021 release, but those clearly haven’t panned out as AMD Zen 4 is still some ways out. This leaves AMD’s Zen 3 chips to compete against Intel Rocket Lake, Tiger Lake, and Alder Lake processors – one of the longest stretches without a major AMD processor generation release in about as long as we can remember. So when can we expect AMD Zen 4 to finally start making it to market? How many cores will the flagship Ryzen 6000-series processor end up having? What kind of performance gains can we expect AMD to achieve using a 5nm process, and are they missing the boat by sticking with a traditional CPU architecture when the market seems to be moving towards the big.
