Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)

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Vattila

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Oct 22, 2004
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Except for the details about the improvements in the microarchitecture, we now know pretty well what to expect with Zen 3.

The leaked presentation by AMD Senior Manager Martin Hilgeman shows that EPYC 3 "Milan" will, as promised and expected, reuse the current platform (SP3), and the system architecture and packaging looks to be the same, with the same 9-die chiplet design and the same maximum core and thread-count (no SMT-4, contrary to rumour). The biggest change revealed so far is the enlargement of the compute complex from 4 cores to 8 cores, all sharing a larger L3 cache ("32+ MB", likely to double to 64 MB, I think).

Hilgeman's slides did also show that EPYC 4 "Genoa" is in the definition phase (or was at the time of the presentation in September, at least), and will come with a new platform (SP5), with new memory support (likely DDR5).

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What else do you think we will see with Zen 4? PCI-Express 5 support? Increased core-count? 4-way SMT? New packaging (interposer, 2.5D, 3D)? Integrated memory on package (HBM)?

Vote in the poll and share your thoughts! :)
 
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Justinus

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Oct 10, 2005
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If you read my post, you would see that I stated that other chips would be on 6nm. FYI nobody is expecting the next Ryzen release to have Zen 4. Pretty much everyone expects Zen 3+. Many sites are saying that Zen 3+ will be on 6nm.

The chip following Warhol would be a Zen 4 based Ryzen. EPYC would either stay on 5nm (since capacity would be improved by then) or move to 3nm.

Well let's see, this thread is about zen 4.... You didn't say anything about zen 3+ vs zen 4 nor did you specify you were speculating about the next ryzen release. I don't know what you want, I responded to what you said given the minute context you gave.

Instead of blaming the reader for your lack of writing skills, maybe correct what you wrote.
 
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Ajay

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Jan 8, 2001
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If you read my post, you would see that I stated that other chips would be on 6nm. FYI nobody is expecting the next Ryzen release to have Zen 4. Pretty much everyone expects Zen 3+. Many sites are saying that Zen 3+ will be on 6nm.

The chip following Warhol would be a Zen 4 based Ryzen. EPYC would either stay on 5nm (since capacity would be improved by then) or move to 3nm.
The problem with N6 is that its mainly about area reduction (-18%) and power reduction (-10%). From publicly available data, it doesn't really add to performance (+2%). So any boost coming from Zen3+ would have to include changes to logic or caches. SemiWiki summary.
 

yuri69

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Jul 16, 2013
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Or it might be a Zen3+ with ~4.5% IPC jump and 5% clock bump :)
Yea, that would be a bugfixed and/or tweaked firmware revision of Zen 3 & process refinements. That's surely a possible scenario. However, the debate started stating there were no Warhol leaks confirming the leaked roadmap.

This situation opens two possibilities - a super-minor rebrand or a late 2021 release.
 

andermans

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Sep 11, 2020
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The problem with N6 is that its mainly about area reduction (-18%) and power reduction (-10%). From publicly available data, it doesn't really add to performance (+2%). So any boost coming from Zen3+ would have to include changes to logic or caches. SemiWiki summary.

The positive news is that a power reduction could very well improve performance for power constrained multicore scenarios. The negative news is that that likely won't matter for gaming. (except for mobile, but Intel is much stronger in mobile than in desktop, so that is an even harder battle)

If we look at Zen+, the improvements were mostly around improving cache latency (which was considered high for Zen at the time). Do we have similar low hanging fruit for zen3 that might be layout only?
 
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lobz

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pardon me

edit: pardon me means sorry, wrong post / not relevant anymore - before any more down- and upvoting's coming its way :D
 
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Ajay

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That makes no sense. If Warhol succeeds Vermeer then AMD will want to have such a thing every calendar year.
Well, Q1 22 makes no sense, for sure. Q2 this year, or maybe Q3 would make sense, if Raphael will be about a year out from Warhol. AMD might do this every year, even if it's only a very minor bump like the 3000 series XTs. Having a 'new' processor every year is something that Intel gave to OEMs, so by now, they have a product cycle built around this sort of release schedule. When we get lucky, AMD will give us more than just clock bumps from better binning. If Warhol is more like Zen+, then at least there is some real improvement. Plus AMD may have squashed the latest security bug in hardware and fixed some errata.
 

Ajay

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Jan 8, 2001
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The positive news is that a power reduction could very well improve performance for power constrained multicore scenarios. The negative news is that that likely won't matter for gaming. (except for mobile, but Intel is much stronger in mobile than in desktop, so that is an even harder battle)

If we look at Zen+, the improvements were mostly around improving cache latency (which was considered high for Zen at the time). Do we have similar low hanging fruit for zen3 that might be layout only?
At ISO power, there is only a 2% bump in xtor switching speeds - so getting more would be like squeezing blood from a nickel. I suppose if the SMU is clocking down part(s) of the CCD due to thermal limits, then lower power might boost peak clocks when operating at lower power. I wouldn't expect average clocks to change though - the limit is governed by transistor characteristics.
 

eek2121

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Aug 2, 2005
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Well, Q1 22 makes no sense, for sure. Q2 this year, or maybe Q3 would make sense, if Raphael will be about a year out from Warhol. AMD might do this every year, even if it's only a very minor bump like the 3000 series XTs. Having a 'new' processor every year is something that Intel gave to OEMs, so by now, they have a product cycle built around this sort of release schedule. When we get lucky, AMD will give us more than just clock bumps from better binning. If Warhol is more like Zen+, then at least there is some real improvement. Plus AMD may have squashed the latest security bug in hardware and fixed some errata.

Ryzen follows a 15-18 month cadence. Warhol is a new core, not an XT style refresh. Warhol and Alder Lake will both likely pop out Q1 2022.
 

andermans

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At ISO power, there is only a 2% bump in xtor switching speeds - so getting more would be like squeezing blood from a nickel. I suppose if the SMU is clocking down part(s) of the CCD due to thermal limits, then lower power might boost peak clocks when operating at lower power. I wouldn't expect average clocks to change though - the limit is governed by transistor characteristics.

I'm a bit unsure how we should count power/performance there. Like if I reduce power by 10% right now on a power limited multicore workload I tend to lose way more than 2% of performance. So at those parts of the frequency curve I'd assume I can get more than 2% performance given the same power budget.

That obviously breaks down at the top of the frequency curve and hence my assumption was that the 2% vs. 10% mostly apply there. I'd assume that applies to the top singlecore frequency. Then again the extra time might also mean AMD has improved the layout of some of the bottlenecks to be less of a bottleneck for the max frequency, who knows?
 

Ajay

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Ryzen follows a 15-18 month cadence. Warhol is a new core, not an XT style refresh. Warhol and Alder Lake will both likely pop out Q1 2022.
So, what I think you are saying, is that Warhol is Zen4. I think that's what David Schor is betting on.
 

moinmoin

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I believe warhol will be an AM5 release to get the chipsets ready and tested for Zen 4. This way they get to iron out any quirks.
Yeah, that was among the first guesses back when Warhol first leaked: Zen 3 CCD with a new AM5 IOD to introduce the new AM5 platform. AMD has plenty possible flexible options, will be interesting to watch which ones it'll actually make use of.
 

eek2121

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Not likely. Raphael should be out in Q1 2022, assuming AMD sees a need to release it "in cadence".

Except current leaks show Warhol to be the successor, not Raphael.

The only possibility for Raphael to launch before Genoa would be if AMD took a similar approach to Cezanne/Lucienne. My money is on Warhol/Genoa Q1 2022 with Raphael in 2023.
 

lobz

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Except current leaks show Warhol to be the successor, not Raphael.

The only possibility for Raphael to launch before Genoa would be if AMD took a similar approach to Cezanne/Lucienne. My money is on Warhol/Genoa Q1 2022 with Raphael in 2023.
I thin AMD's suffering from quite the delays right now, certainly more so than many people would like to admit. Even though I don't believe ADL and SPR actually come out this Fall or even this year, I do think they would come out earlier than both Zen 4 desktop (that's practically a given at this point) and Genoa (there's likely going to be 1-2 quarters where SPR is available and Genoa is not). That is my take on this.
 

DrMrLordX

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Except current leaks show Warhol to be the successor, not Raphael.

The only possibility for Raphael to launch before Genoa would be if AMD took a similar approach to Cezanne/Lucienne. My money is on Warhol/Genoa Q1 2022 with Raphael in 2023.

Why wouldn't Raphael launch before Genoa? Vermeer launched well before Milan (thanks to AMD sitting on Milan for so long).
 
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Racan

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I thin AMD's suffering from quite the delays right now, certainly more so than many people would like to admit. Even though I don't believe ADL and SPR actually come out this Fall or even this year, I do think they would come out earlier than both Zen 4 desktop (that's practically a given at this point) and Genoa (there's likely going to be 1-2 quarters where SPR is available and Genoa is not). That is my take on this.

Sadly yes it seems so, at least Warhol based chips should a bit more affordable than Alder Lake if they won't perform up to par until Zen 4 arrives.
 

uzzi38

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Yea, that would be a bugfixed and/or tweaked firmware revision of Zen 3 & process refinements. That's surely a possible scenario. However, the debate started stating there were no Warhol leaks confirming the leaked roadmap.

This situation opens two possibilities - a super-minor rebrand or a late 2021 release.
Warhol is definitely H2 2021
 
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eek2121

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Why wouldn't Raphael launch before Genoa? Vermeer launched well before Milan (thanks to AMD sitting on Milan for so long).

Because (according to leaks, so treat accordingly) Warhol is supposed to be the next desktop release.
 

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NostaSeronx

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raphael.png

Feb 2021+ product bring up.

I can only find GPUs and one other IP bring ups so far with CPUs being less exact:
Vega10 bring up: Jan 2017-April 2017 => August 2017 launch
MI50/MI60 bring up: Jan 2018(start month) => November 2018 launch
Navi10 bring up: July 2018+ => July 2019 launch
PCIe 4.0 bring up in client/server: September 2018+ => July/August 2019 launch
Fiji bring up: Sept 2014 - November 2014 => June 2015 launch
Ontario bring up: 2010(no exact month) => January 2011 launch
Mullins bring up: 2013(no exact month) => April 2014 launch
Kaveri bring up: August 2013 => January~June 2014 launch
Radeon Pro 560x bring up: 2017(no exact month) => July 2018 launch
Radeon Pro Vega bring up: 2018(no exact month) => November 2018 launch
MI100 bring up: July 2019+(no exact start) => November 2020 launch
Zen SoC/Server (Zeppelin) bring up: Before August 2016, After November 2015 => March 2017 launch
MI200 bring up award: December 2020 => not yet launched.
3 launched within the year of first bring-up mention.
9 launched the year after first bring-up mention. Of those, majority of the mentions are during the later half/second half of the year.

On DDR-side LPDDR5/DDR5 has two spots of bring up: January 2020+ and July 2020+.

So, Raphael launching earlier than expected is more likely. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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eek2121

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I thin AMD's suffering from quite the delays right now, certainly more so than many people would like to admit. Even though I don't believe ADL and SPR actually come out this Fall or even this year, I do think they would come out earlier than both Zen 4 desktop (that's practically a given at this point) and Genoa (there's likely going to be 1-2 quarters where SPR is available and Genoa is not). That is my take on this.

So, somehow your comment got swallowed and I only saw the reply. Basically, AMD isn’t delayed. They could launch Raphael the first half of this year if they had to. However, this is simply not a game that you play. This is true for any industry, and by the way, market position has little to do with it.


View attachment 42979

Feb 2021+ product bring up.

I can only find GPUs and one other IP bring ups so far with CPUs being less exact:
Vega10 bring up: Jan 2017-April 2017 => August 2017 launch
MI50/MI60 bring up: Jan 2018(start month) => November 2018 launch
Navi10 bring up: July 2018+ => July 2019 launch
PCIe 4.0 bring up in client/server: September 2018+ => July/August 2019 launch
Fiji bring up: Sept 2014 - November 2014 => June 2015 launch
Ontario bring up: 2010(no exact month) => January 2011 launch
Mullins bring up: 2013(no exact month) => April 2014 launch
Kaveri bring up: August 2013 => January~June 2014 launch
Radeon Pro 560x bring up: 2017(no exact month) => July 2018 launch
Radeon Pro Vega bring up: 2018(no exact month) => November 2018 launch
MI100 bring up: July 2019+(no exact start) => November 2020 launch
Zen SoC/Server (Zeppelin) bring up: Before August 2016, After November 2015 => March 2017 launch
MI200 bring up award: December 2020 => not yet launched.
3 launched within the year of first bring-up mention.
9 launched the year after first bring-up mention. Of those, majority of the mentions are during the later half/second half of the year.

On DDR-side LPDDR5/DDR5 has two spots of bring up: January 2020+ and July 2020+.

So, Raphael launching earlier than expected is more likely. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nosta, like most folks (probably), I love you, but I hope you aren’t playing the lottery! 🤣. I am actually sending much love your way, however, because I know you are a good person and your heart is in the right place 😊.
 
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