During the Hot Chips 28 convention, AMD has showcased not only details on the performance records that come with Zen CPUs but also its manufacture plans for Zen's successor chips.
Next AMD CPUs On 7-Nanometer Node
According to Tech Times, AMD's Zen processor will come with 500 percent increase in L3 bandwidth, a faster L2 and L3 cache, a significant OP Cache and larger instruction schedulers.
AMD designed its Zen processor for top levels of performance while it keeps low power consumption. The Summit Ridge series will be the first AMD CPUs to feature the novel Zen cores.
The Zen chips will be produced by the company using the current 14-nanometer process. However, as reported by PCWorld, AMD is already planning its next important process on 7-nanometer.
AMD has recently renewed an accord with spin-off GlobalFoundries and the deal includes plans for the advance to 7-nanometer technologies. AMD's has modified the terms of the contract through 2020.
AMD is planning custom chip manufacturing advances, GPUs and CPUs on the 14-nm and 7-nm processes. The company's approach is different from Intel that, before taking on 7-nm, will be moving to the 10-nm process only next year. However, GlobalFoundries' roadmap is unclear, the company developing internally both 7-nm and 10-nm technologies.
For AMD it seems that the immediate successor to Zen will be on the 14-nm process, since the company did not say if it was planning for chips on the 10-nm process and the 7-nm process is still considered many years out. According to tech experts, chip roadmap planning is dependent in great measure on the manufacturing process. Chip manufacturer companies base their processor features on the manufacturing process.
AMD has planned its Polaris architecture for GPUs and many of its features such as the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for the 14-nm manufacturing process. The future 7-nm chip manufacturing process is considered by tech experts as a big advance in chip manufacturing.
