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!

3rd generation Ryzen Processors: Things that we learned at CES

AMD unveils world's first 7nm chip - beats Intel i9

There was no shortage of cutting-edge techs and glittering new devices in this year's CES, From VR bikes and robot butlers to paper-thin notebooks and foldable smartphones, gracing the show floor as they were to entice your inner nerd. Yet it was AMD that stole the show with a not-yet-finalized piece of silicon with two chiplets in it. And by the time you realized it was an early engineering sample of the company's upcoming Ryzen 3rd generation desktop processor - world's first 7nm desktop CPU, you probably couldn't care less about the rest of CES! We can't blame you either, it's Ryzen we're talking about after all - the processor that single-handedly changed the landscape of desktop computing in last two years. And from what we saw in CES, things are about to be shaken-up once more.
 
Expectation were pretty high when Dr. Lisa Su, Ceo and president of AMD, took to the stage to deliver her keynote address. Rumors and speculations were making rounds prior to the event within tech sites and forums, speaking of Ryzen 3000 series SKUs with some of them being too good to be true. Having been well aware of the anticipation, Dr. Su made good use of limelight that CES offers. AMD teased us with a working silicon, the aforementioned sample, of a 3rd generation Ryzen 8-core/16-thread CPU and showed glimpses of performance that we can expect from their upcoming high-end platform which will also be the first to support PCIe gen 4.0. 

The de-lidded CPU die that AMD showed features a new chiplet design. The bigger chip is built on a 14nm GlobalFoundries process and it handles the I/O duties along with various controllers and connectivity. It's the somewhat inconspicuous smaller chip where in lie the next-gen cores(presumably housed within next-gen Core-complex or CCX), built on a bleeding-edge TSMC 7nm fabrication process. It's a clever design choice as the performance of CPU mostly depends on its cores. Also, splitting the manufacturing load between two fabs might help AMD overcome some early yield issues.

If you look carefully, as some keen-eyed reviewers did, you can see that there is just about enough space to nudge another 8-core/16-thread chiplet or perhaps even a graphics one in future. The 16C/32T config might be reserved for HEDT and socket TR4.

These new chips will also implement Zen 2 core design. Back in 2017 when AMD introduced it's completely new and forward looking Zen micro-architecture with the 1st gen Ryzen processors, the company also stated its commitment to improve and enhance the design in a regular and long-term basis. Staying true to that course, AMD launched 2nd gen Ryzen line up last year based on Zen+ micro-architecture which brought minor refinements along with a matured 12nm process. Zen 2 however is going to be the next big step in the architecture's logical evolution and we expect some major improvements in the core-design; The primary of those being an uplift in IPC (instructions per clock-cycle), one that would enable AMD to close-in on Intel's still superior single-threaded performance.

In a performance demo, AMD pitted its yet unnamed octal-core Ryzen 3rd gen against a Coffee Lake Refresh Core i9 9900K - Intel's flagship behemoth costing around 55,000 Rupees. The selected benchmark was Cinebech - one of the darlings of enthusiasts and reviewers around the world. AMD didn't disclosed the clock-speed of the sample but mentioned it's not final which means there is still room for improvement; the Intel chip ran on its default 3.6GHz/5GHz speed. Results are very impressive - The Ryzen actually completed the rendering faster(2057score, 135w) and consumed much less power than its Intel counterpart(2040score, 180w). There was also a gaming demo of Forza Horizon 4 and while it was running smooth @4K, we can't get much out of that.
 
From that Cinebench score alone, we can see that the 3rd gen Ryzen (R7 3700X/3800X??) is at least 15% faster than current flagship R7 2700x and matches Coffee Lake Refresh parts core-for-core. Even after taking Cinebench's multithread affinity into account, that seems like a remarkable generational leap for AMD. Not long ago we were used to accepting ~5% performance gain over previous gen CPUs, thanks to Intel and its stingy updates.
 
From the looks of it 3rd gen Ryzen processors should clock higher, how much we don't know. We can guess it's going to be in the range of ~4.5GHz to 4.8GHz. We also don't know at this point how much pure IPC gain AMD has achieved with these new breed of chips, just as we don't know how they are going to be priced. What we know is this - Ryzen 3rd gen is shaping up to be another powerhouse of a processor from AMD. With backward compatibility guaranteed, this is great news for existing AM4 users as they can just drop in these new CPUs for a clean and hassle-free upgrade.

Optimization matters: Ryzen gets a performance boost in Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity was the first PC game to come out with full DirectX 12 support and now it has also become the first Ryzen optimized title out there. In an interesting turn of events, Oxide Games – the studio which created Ashes of the Singularity – has released a patch update to improve the game’s performance on AMD’s recently launched Ryzen processors. Independent reviewers with access to game’s latest beta version have already run benchmarks and results demonstrate a performance boost of around 20%. This not only improves the in-game standings of Ryzen 7 CPUs but more importantly, it gives us an idea of what could be done if game developers are willing to tap into Ryzen’s ample resources.

AMD Ryzen 5 CPUs: Here comes the mainstream - specs, features and performance expectation

With the Ryzen 7 series of desktop processors AMD has made its much awaited return to the high-performance computing market and what a come-back story it has been! After years of frustration and misfiring, the perennial underdog has finally delivered a truly competitive x86 core design that can, in most cases, give Intel a good run for its money. But the Ryzen saga is just beginning and after launching the initial salvo comprising the flagship trio of Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X and 1700, AMD wants to shift its attention to the mainstream. The result is Ryzen 5 which forms the mid-range of AMD’s new processor line-up and brings the same Zen goodness to a more affordable package.

Ryzen countdown: list of new CPUs, specs, price and release date

AMD Ryzen processors are ready for shipment, image credit Videocardz, click to enlarge

The wait for AMD’s long waited Ryzen microprocessors is almost over. According to many sources worldwide, at least some of these next-gen high-end chips are going to be released within February 28^th – March 2^nd timeframe. With the NDA being lifted at the end of the current month, we can expect to see the reviews and benchmarks on the launch date too. The reports suggest that it’ll be the flagship 8-core/16-thread models coming out first, followed closely by the others members of what is supposed to be a family of no less than 17 brand new CPUs. Various tech publications seem to have already gotten their hands on review samples; which means Ryzen is being put through its paces as I write this!

Zen evolves: AMD has Ryzen!

AMD’s upcoming Zen core-architecture has grabbed a lot of attention recently and with good reasons too. Zen is not only the brand new x86 micro-architecture from AMD in a long time; it also has the difficult yet important task of bringing the competition back into the enthusiast space. The competition that was still there back in the K10/K12 days, resulting in some fine line of CPUs like Phenom and Thuban. Since then however things have been downhill for AMD. FX processors based on Bulldozer, the company’s last generation micro-architecture didn’t fare well and while Piledriver, its eventual update, improved performance a bit it was nowhere near challenging Intel’s supremacy. Whether Zen is going to change all that is a million rupee question and to get the answer we have to wait till the 1^st quarter of 2017 when the Summit Ridge platform (Zen + AM4 motherboards) will be made available for mass market. For now we know this – it’ll be called Ryzen and it can go toe-to-toe with an Intel i7-6900K!

Last week AMD hosted an event dubbed New Horizon in Austin, Texas to shed new lights on some of the specs, features and performance of the upcoming release. So without wasting anytime, let’s delve into the details. First of all – "Zen" has evolved into "Ryzen"! No, it’s not some kind of a new Pokemon if that’s what you’ve been wondering about; rather, it’s the name under which the first products based on Zen architecture will see the light of day. This may sound a bit confusing to the uninitiated but that’s how things are in the semiconductor industry – lots of codes and lots of names! For now just remember that the underlying architecture is still the same old Zen but the new series of processors based on it are going to be branded as Ryzen. Does that mean that AMD is going to ditch the “FX” moniker which the current batches of Vishera CPUs bear? Seems very likely as the company may decide to give the famed “FX” branding a rest after the not so glorious 2^nd innings and start things anew with “Ryzen”. There could be more than one high-end processor under the “Ryzen” branding umbrella along with the one that AMD demonstrated in the event. The part in question is an 8-core 16-thread model, clocked at 3.4GHz base frequency and features a whopping 16MB L3 cache (20MB total). The TDP (Thermal Design Power) is a very respectable 95W for such specifications. There is no word on the boost clock although AMD has indicated that the clock frequency could go even higher. Remember that the silicon isn’t yer ready for the primetime and it wasn’t that long ago when early engineering samples were reported to be operating at around 2.8GHz with AMD itself showing a 3GHz part during IDF. Needless to say the final clock speed will be one of the most interesting aspects of Ryzen launch. 

Handbrake video transcoding results as captured by Tom's Hardware

Next-up is performance and once again AMD is doing a good job of not disclosing hard numbers! That’s understandable though being this close to launch. Instead AMD arranged some demos where Ryzen was pitted against a fully-fledged i7-6900K. Now that’s some serious competition as this is an octal-core Broadwell-E part which belongs to Intel’s coveted HEDT (High End Desk-top) line-up and boasts a 3.2Ghz base clock which can reach 3.70 GHz with boost. Not to mention the astronomical price tag of INR.90K that it bears! Blender and Handbrake were among AMD’s benchmark of choice and we know both software can utilize multiple-core CPUs efficiently. In the Blender demo Ryzen seems to finish the rendering as fast as the i7-6900K, while in Handbrake it’s faster by a few seconds! There’s gaming too, Battlefield 1 to be specific, where both CPUs appeared to deliver very similar gaming experience and frame-rates. Unfortunately it was being played at 4K resolution where it’s mostly GPU bound – so, that doesn’t tell much about Ryzen’s gaming capability. As many reviewers have already noted, the mainstream i7-6700K (or the 7700K, depending on the time) would be a more practical challenger to Ryzen when it comes to gaming. A curious little observation could be made though from one of the demos – gaming and streaming, when done simultaneously felt smoother on Ryzen @3.4GHz than i7-6700K @4.5GHz! We leave the conclusion to you as we’re not sure if this is gaming or multitasking :)

 

These are some striking results even after considering the favorable conditions which are generally associated with such organized demos. Finally, it looks like AMD has done a commendable job of designing a modern efficient processor. You may already know that from an architectural viewpoint Zen/Ryzen is quite a departure from AMD’s recent design philosophy. With the Bulldozer core-architecture AMD went for a “speed-demon” design with deep pipeline resulting in a processor core optimized for high frequencies. But that speed came at the cost of high latency and branch miss-prediction penalties which severely affected the IPC (Instruction per Clock-cycle) throughput. Also, the modular CMT (Clustered Multi Threading) approach of Bulldozer where computing resources are shared within a module, proved inefficient in most single threaded workloads. Piledriver brought some much needed refinement but that didn’t prevent AMD from essentially ceding the high-end of personal computing market to its arch nemesis. The mainstream FX CPUs never received the proposed Steamroller and Excavator upgrades as AMD didn’t thought it to be prudent to invest resources and time into a battle already lost. Instead the engineering team, lead by famous architect Jim Keller, focused its attention on Zen. Zen is much more of a conventional design with a strong emphasis on IPC. In fact AMD claims to deliver a radical 40% throughput gain, clock for clock, when compared to previous generation. To what extent that promise would realize into practical benchmarks remains to be seen but these early findings indicates that AMD might finally have something big in form of Ryzen in its hand.