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

[Vattila]

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).

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!

 

[nicalandia]

The fun thing is that from AMD PPT increase, very high clocks at same time it seems that Zen3 has caught them with pants down

Wait What?

It's the Other way around. It's ADL that has been Clocked and Juiced beyond sense to catch and beat AMD Zen3(12900K), Go on and see how Alder lake and Zen3 perform at ISO Power and ISO Core.

Alder lake is no match for Zen4 and anyone hoping otherwise it's just fooling themselves.

 

[JoeRambo]

Wait What? Sorry dude, I had to fix that for you.

Isn't it AMD who are rising PPT by 62% this round, repeating Intel's BS? I doubt RPL will add more than 10%, since they are already maxed. That sure is not cause of ADL/RPL

 

[nicalandia]

Isn't it AMD who are rising PPT by 62% this round, repeating Intel's BS? I doubt RPL will add more than 10%, since they are already maxed. That sure is not cause of ADL/RPL

Look ADL and by extension RPL are really not that impressive when compared to a very solid Zen3 line. Intel had to max and juice the 12900K and 12900KS beyond sense to stand out.

ADL/RPL are not the "Sandy Bridge" moment Intel and some people here thought it could be.


Zen4 will have a higher PPT to give the core more room to stretch it's leg. Just look how good Zen3 is when given room(PBO and OC) on MT performance

 

[yuri69]

AMD's problem is their Zen 3 core is going to be 2 years old when its successor finally hits. In the meantime Intel pushed RKL, ADL, and maybe even RPL. So AMD's designs simply have to be pretty strong and age well since their lifecycle is pretty long.

 

[JoeRambo]

Let's just keep to our own opinions then, I own both 5950x and 12900k and both are amazing in a way i use them.

And Zen4 is shaping up as uninspired from many aspects. I think only clock rate increase is very good news. Other than that, AMD is keeping core count stale, L3 cache size stale and from leaks their performance increase seems to be riding mostly on clock speed increase. Even power efficiency is going down, as they are increasing PPT by 62% and there might be SKU that is less power efficient than 5950x is.
All this while having huge help from process, they are full node ahead of Intel, yet die sizes are similar to 7nm. Where's the IPC tho?

 

[Mopetar]

AMD presumably has the option of releasing a desktop part using Zen 4c chiplets to increase core count. Whether or not they actually do is going to depend on a competitive need for doing so.

The doubling of the L2 cache alleviates pressure on the L3 cache and we can probably expect Zen 4D at some point for the gaming crowd. It seems likely that Zen will match Zen 3D on average, but games like MS Flight Simulator may still perform better on Zen 3D.

I wouldn't consider Zen 4 uninspired at all. We merely see AMD releasing multiple products for different market segments instead of trying to shoehorn in a solution for everyone into a single product. I expect to see the same from Intel with some products having a large number of E cores and few P cores, and another with the opposite as opposed to trying to release a chip that just has large numbers of each.

 

[Hans Gruber]

A lot of nonsense being mentioned and argued here on this last page. People seem to forget that Zen 2 was on 7nm and Zen 3 was also on 7nm which both saw huge gains over their predecessors. Zen 4 will be on 5nm and benefit from the die shrink in the power department in a big way. Intel has always juiced their processors to get huge performance out of outdated silicon. Alder Lake was Intel's first silicon below 14nm. That is in large part why Intel has seen a huge increase with Alder Lake. Raptor Lake is also on 10nm and could see a significant benefit in performance as Zen 3 saw on 7nm vs Zen 2.

For Intel fanboys, they will probably have to wait for the Intel 7nm process in Meteor Lake for uncontested market leader performance. That has been my main concern beyond Zen 4. The release schedule for next generation AMD (Zen4)and Intel (Raptor Lake) CPU's is right around the same time. Intel has already said they are rapidly accelerating their CPU generations development to leave AMD in their rearview mirror.

If Zen 5 is delayed because of the 3nm being slightly delayed by TSMC. That does not bode well for AMD vs. Intel in the coming generations of CPU's. Will Zen 5 appear on 5nm or 3nm silicon. The big problem past Zen 4 will be the release time table of Zen 5. They are talking mid to late 2024 release date for Zen 5. The problem down the road will be Meteor Lake on 7nm. Regardless, AMD has had a very good run with Ryzen.

 

[moinmoin]

The fun thing is that from AMDs PPT increase, very high clocks at same time it seems that ADL has caught them with pants down uninspired and unambitious design, hopefully they will do better with ZEN5. Maybe their V/F curve is not hockey stick shaped, who knows, but most likely they are about to come up with highly "balanced" marketing SKU themselves.

Let's keep to the facts:

• With 170W TDP/230W PPT AMD added another TDP/PPT level to the upcoming AM5 platform, which theoretically could be used just for offering more of headroom for MT. Whether a chip will actually require it we don't know yet. The Gigagbyte leak which first mentioned the new 170W TDP referred to it as a water/liquid cooled platform in contrast to all the lower TDP levels which makes me think it will be optional for high power boards, with all chips continuing to be able to run at lower TDPs.
• With every Zen gen AMD targeted an aspect Intel previously still dominated. With Zen 1 AMD passed in Intel in core count. With Zen 2 AMD leveled Intel in general performance at better efficiency. With Zen 3 AMD finally managed to pass Intel in ST (ADL subsequently won that crown back). With Zen 4 AMD apparently wants to match or pass Intel in reachable frequency. While I personally prefer U chips from both companies as I consider everything above grossly inefficient, I recognize that plenty people appear to want high frequencies from both Intel and AMD. Meanwhile Intel with ADL actually regressed efficiency wise from TGL.
• "ADL has caught them with pants down uninspired and unambitious design" which design are you referring to? If Zen 4, jumping to conclusion early much? Edit: Ok, I see from your follow up post that you dedicated yourself to fully jumping in. Well, good luck with that. No point in discussing pure fiction about upcoming products.
• The V/F curve looking hockey stick shaped so far is exactly the challenge AMD has to solve for Zen 4 to reach the high frequency indicated so far. It looked better on mobile Zen chips than the desktop ones already, but those are obviously stunted to lower frequencies whereas the desktop Zen chips so far hit a hard wall.
• I keep being told that running E-cores in ADL at 4 GHz with an efficiency worse than the P-cores is down to Intel's marketing staff dictating the chips' design. I rather want those fired than AMD following suit with an equally unbalanced mess.

 

[nicalandia]

I am just here waiting for this info

Financial Analyst Day

ir.amd.com

 

[Vope45]

8-10% IPC increase, 35% increase in cb. Zen 5 2024.

Overall disappointing news

 

[desrever]

zen 5 is 2024

 

[moinmoin]

Zen 4 appears to be using N4.

 

[nicalandia]

So Zen4C will be on 4nm and Zen4 With 3D V Cache is already being tested.



7800X3D Confirmed then..!

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Zen 4 appears to be using N4.

I don't think it is. If it was, there would be no reason for the graphic to list "5nm". I think it's Zen 4c that uses N4 -- it also makes more sense, because it gets released later, and N4 would be really tight to launch in volume in the timeframe we are expecting Zen 4.

 

[Abwx]

I don't think it is. If it was, there would be no reason for the graphic to list "5nm". I think it's Zen 4c that uses N4 -- it also makes more sense, because it gets released later, and N4 would be really tight to launch in volume in the timeframe we are expecting Zen 4.

Or they may do a shrink from 5nm to 4nm as they did with their APU, this would extend the lifetime of the product thanks to some perf/Watt improvements, that s a possibility given a roughly two years time frame before the next Zen gen.

 

[exquisitechar]

zen 5 is 2024
View attachment 62842

No surprise there, some "leakers" have egg on their faces again. They're always too optimistic about AMD CPU launch windows.

8-10% IPC increase

Angstronomics/SkyJuice were spot on and it makes sense from what was shown at Computex. Will be interesting to see a breakdown of the core.

 

[nicalandia]

Okay that that we have solid IPC numbers we can estimate what >15% ST performance boost is.

IPC At ISO speed: 10% boost(Average 8-10, some apps will see a significant boost some may not)

ST Performance is base(Zen3) x 1.10 x Speed which is 20%(some claims about 5.85 ghz Max boost clocks) so 30% boost in ST performance on apps that take advantage of it and at least 15-20% for apps that don't.

 

[yuri69]

zen 5 is 2024

Zen 4 (aka "the refresh") is gonna take 2 yeras to deliver. Previous gens took also more than a year.

So Zen 4 has to fight ADL, RPL, MTL/Arrow, and maybe another gen.

 

[trivik12]

Zen 4 is a great product especially with performance per watt improvements. Just hope to see laptops based on it(U series) earlier than what we are seeing for Rembrandt. I hope the recent warning from TSMC on issues with production ramp up does not impact all their customers. I think Apple would get the 1st big bite for everything then comes others AMD/Nvidia/Qualcomm etc.

 

[desrever]

Zen 4 "refresh" is gonna take 2 yeras to deliver. Previous gens took also more than a year.

So Zen 4 has to fight ADL, RPL, MTL/Arrow, and maybe another gen.

Depends on when in 2024 it is. Also Zen4D will likely be a full stack of CPUs this time compared to just 1 Zen3D cpu this gen.

 

[Vope45]

Zero news about Rdna 3 too. Seems to me with both intel and nvidia pushing back this year amd is having trouble to compete on both fronts

 

[gdansk]

View attachment 62845

Okay that that we have solid IPC numbers we can estimate what >15% ST performance boost is.

IPC At ISO speed: 10% boost(Average 8-10, some apps will see a significant boost some may not)

ST Performance is base(Zen3) x 1.10 x Speed which is 20%(some claims about 5.85 ghz Max boost clocks) so 30% boost in ST performance on apps that take advantage of it and at least 15-20% for apps that don't.

Believing the leaks again? They never stop conflating IPC with ST performance. It isn't 5.85GHz. They showed 5520MHz for a reason. It might be higher in mostly NOP loops but for calculating ST performance what good is an empty loop. 110% clock speed * 110% IPC = 121% ST performance.

It will be more in MT...

 

[Karnak]

Zero news about Rdna 3 too.

Wut?
Chiplets confirmed.
>50% perf/watt improvement over RDNA2 confirmed.
Even higher clock speeds than RDNA2 confirmed by Wang.

Besides that, no matter if Zen4 or GPUs, it's still a financial analysts day and not a "announcing all the details for upcoming products or architectures".

 

[gdansk]

Maybe this time they will do dual CCD chiplets with vcache (making it mixed could complicate scheduler)

 

[nicalandia]

Zen 4 "refresh" is gonna take 2 yeras to deliver. Previous gens took also more than a year.

So Zen 4 has to fight ADL, RPL, MTL/Arrow, and maybe another gen.

Zen5 is not a "Refresh" from Zen4, Zen4 it's a Refresh or midway upgrade from Zen3.




The entire Zen4 stack is design to compete favorably against ADL/RPL and MTL. Zen4 is enough to put a hurting on Alder Lake, Zen4 3D V-Cache will keep/regain any gaming crown and Zen4c exceed at throughput..