AMD unveiled last week in Sonoma some new details on its upcoming Zen CPU architecture that it will be marketed under the "Ryzen" brand name.
AMD Ryzen CPUs
Aside of unveiling the branding, AMD also gave some additional details on the CPU's total L2/L3 cache, minimum clock frequency, and new performance capabilities. The Ryzen processors brand will be based on five underlying "SenseMI" technologies in order to make the chip very efficient.
According to PC World, back in August, AMD impressed the hardware industry by demonstrating that its Zen architecture could compete with the best processors from the rival Intel. Now AMD has revealed more details about its most exciting processor in 20 years.
Summit Ridge CPU In The Desktop Family
AMD's focus in the year 2017 will be the first chip in the desktop family, code-named Summit Ridge. AMD recently demonstrated in ZBrush and Handbrake benchmarks that its 8-core Summit Ridge chip can keep up with, or even potentially exceed, Intel's 8-core Core i7-6900K processor that works at 3.2GHz frequency launched this past May. According to AMD the performance of its processor is due in part to the Summit Ridge chip's higher 3.4GHz clock speed.
According to Extreme Tech, the 20MB of cache in its Summit Ridge processor doesn't specify between L2 and L3. However, based on the information that each CPU complex (CCX) consists of four CPU cores backed by 8MB of L3 cache, tech experts believe that the CPU will come with 512KB of L2 for each CPU core and 16MB of shared L3.
Performance Improvements In Zen CPUs
AMD claims that Zen represents a 40 percent improvement in IPC over Excavator. Tech experts believe that part of the performance boost comes from the processor's new symmetric multithreading technology SMT. The new features announced by AMD in Sonoma will have a significant impact on power consumption and performance.
These new technologies are collectively referred by AMD as SenseMI (the MI refers to "Machine Intelligence"). The new Ryzen CPU brand name is meant to capitalize on the recent popularity of deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI) research.
The exact launch dates for the new CPUs are still uncertain, as AMD did not make any official announcement yet. However, Lisa Su has publicly stated that Zen CPUs will come on the market sometime during the Q1 2017. Tech experts expect the company will launch Zen launch somewhere between late January and late March.
According to tech market analysts, the entire future of AMD hangs on this launch. AMD's CPU and graphics revenue is 27 percent of the figure achieved in Q3 2011 and that means that the company's primary businesses have effectively collapsed.
The upcoming Zen architecture represents an opportunity for AMD to reinvigorate its consumer and server fortunes. According to market analysts, these fields were, historically, far more important to AMD's bottom line than GPU sales.
An AMD CPU that could compete with Intel's Core i3 / i5 / i7 families was expected by PC enthusiasts for a long time. Now, there are hopes that in just a few months the Ryzen CPUs will step up the competition on the CPU market to new levels.
