Saturday, September 14, 2019

AMD roadmaps reveal Zen 3, RDNA 2 on-track for 2020 lunch: Zen 4 by 2022?

It's roadmap time again! Guru3D.com have published couple of new ones from AMD that talk about things to come in both CPU and GPU fronts. The slides, which seems to have been reserved for corporate briefing, make reference to Zen 3, RDNA 2 and even Gen 4. While nothing concrete or out of line of what we already know, this confirms that AMD is on track with future iterations of its current-gen designs.


Here, the CPU roadmap shows that AMD already has the design phase of  Zen 3 completed and currently is working on the design of its successor, Zen 4. Future CPUs (Ryzen 4000?) based on Zen 3 core-architecture will be built on a 7nm+, i.e. a more refined and mature 7nm, fabrication process at TSMC. Moreover, Zen 3 will utilize an EUV (Extreme UltraViolet) lithography compared to Zen 2's DUV ( Deep UltraViolet). With Zen 3, AMD's stated goal is enhanced power efficiency but the higher transistor density granted by the process refinements can be used towards raising the clock-speed as well.

The underlying timeline in the above roadmap spans five years and lack finer graduations which means no specific launch dateline. But it looks like AMD has a 2020 launch in mind for Zen 3.


It's not all quiet on the graphics front either! This year we saw AMD introducing its Navi GPUs based on company's latest graphics architecture dubbed RDNA. The next update to that will come in form of RDNA2 which is in design, also destined for 7nm+ process. At this point in time, we don't know much about RDNA2 and it could be at least a full year off from now considering AMD is yet to release its full RDNA product stack.

All in all, AMD sure seems poised to take its newfound momentum into the future and executed well enough, can usher a new era for the company!

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