AMD Zen is now called Ryzen, First Set of Summit Ridge Desktop CPUs will be available in Q1 2017
The AMD Zen CPU architecture will now be known as Ryzen. The first set of these 'Summit Ridge' desktop CPUs is expected to be ship in Q1 2017. AMD has finally shed some light on the details of its upcoming processor line-up.
The Ryzen will use AM4 platform which will use an 8-core 16-thread CPU and the base clock for the high-end SKU will be atleast 3.4 GHz, reported AnandTech. But it's still no match for the Intel's i7-6700K which has a base clock of 4Ghz. The new CPU's are also said to feature 4MB of L2 and 16MB of L3 cache. Moreover, the AM4 platform also supports DDR4, PCIe Gen 3, USB 3.1 Gen.2, NVMe storage. AMD says that AM4is designed to "run multiple processors over multiple generations".
The performance gains and the efficient energy use are attributed in part to the new AMD SenseMI technology. The five components of this technology include - Pure Power, Precision Boost, Extended frequency Range, Neutral Net Prediction and Smart Prefetch.
Pure Power is a set of temperature, clock speed and voltage sensors that promise efficient power delivery to the CPU. Precision Boost takes that information and uses it to adjust the clock speeds in real time without any disruptions in 25MHz increments. The next tweak called Extended Frequency Range or XFR will boost the clock speed of the CPU outside of the typical range provided the user has sufficient cooling setup installed which can prevent the CPU from over-heating, reports arsTECHNICA. The process for overclocking is completely automatic and full manual overclocking is still there for power users.
Neutral Net Prediction will increase the overall efficiency of the CPU by letting it anticipate future decisions, preload instructions and will help shuffle data through the CPU. Smart Prefetch will let Ryzen CPU's to anticipate the location of future data accesses by application code and then prefetch the vital data into a local cache.
AMD however, has not made any announcements regarding the pricing of Ryzen but these chips will be available by Q1 2017 for desktops and by Q2 for servers.