AMD Zen 4 CPUs are Coming and Will be on an Insanely Small 5nm Node; IPC Improvement is Going to be Nuts

RJ Pierce, Tech Times 05 May 2021, 02:05 am

Rumors have been going around concerning the upcoming Zen 4 CPUs from AMD, but they've been lacking a few details to get fans excited. Well maybe this one will.

TweakTown reports that the new AMD Zen 4 processors are coming around the second quarter of 2022, and will be manufactured on a tiny 5nm node (though frankly, calling 5nm "tiny" is a massive understatement). Codenamed Raphael, the next-gen Ryzen 7000 parts will also feature an integrated GPU based on the Navi 2 architecture.

(Photo : David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Lisa Su, president and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), holds a 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor while speaking during a keynote session at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019. Su said that the Radeon VII would go on sale next month, and that the 7-nanometer Epyc and Ryzen desktop CPUs would be released in mid-2019.

According to VideoCardz, the information came from a leaker with the online handle sepeuwmjh. It's worth noting that this is the same one who revealed a small part of the AMD CPU roadmap, and that they are also pretty active when it comes to leaking info about the Raphael chips.

AMD is expected to officially do a hard launch of the Zen 4 lineup by Q4 of next year, which is roughly two years since the release of Zen 3 Ryzen 5000, as reported on WCCFTech.

Going Toe-To-Toe With Alder Lake

For its next-generation of CPUs, AMD competitor Intel is bringing out a massive change with the reveal of their big.LITTLE architecture. This means that future parts starting from Alder Lake will have at most an 8+8 core configuration on the high-end (8 big, fast cores and 8 small, efficient cores) to improve their performance-per-watt numbers.

What do the Zen 4 chips have to compete? Well, experts are predicting an insane performance jump: 40% over Zen 3, which already has the amazing Ryzen 5000 lineup to carry its banner. IPC (instructions per clock) levels are also rumored to have a 25% gain compared to the previous architecture. Also, it's most notably not going the same route as big.LITTLE, according to PCGamesN.

(Photo : (Photo by Neil Godwin/PC Gamer Magazine/Future via Getty Images))
A group of AMD Ryzen and Intel Core central processing units, taken on June 2, 2017.

But here's the one thing you should focus on: that 5nm node. What this means is that with a manufacturing process that small, a CPU will be able to fit billions upon billions more transistors into a single package, thereby improving overall performance and power-efficiency. Compare this to Intel Alder Lake's 10nm process, and the separation is even greater up close.

Ryzen 6000 Skipped, Cezanne Is Coming

One of the most noteworthy things about this is that AMD is apparently skipping the Ryzen 6000 series, which was codenamed Warhol and based on a Zen 3+ refresh. The reason is it was apparently cancelled, as stated by WCCFTech. These CPUs were supposed to have been produced on the 6nm node, but AMD ultimately decided to pull the plug.

(Photo : (Photo by Olly Curtis/Maximum PC Magazine/Future via Getty Images))
An AMD Ryzen 3 2200G CPU, taken on March 16, 2018.

For now, fans can look forward to the release of the Ryzen Cezanne APUs which have been shown to pack enough CPU and graphical punch for gamers without graphics cards. They're still OEM-exclusive now, but AMD vows they'll eventually release it to retail by the end of the year. But it does make one wonder if the Raphael chips will share the same fate, being APUs themselves.

Looks like only time will tell.

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Written by RJ Pierce