During AMD Keynote at Computex 2022, its CEO Dr. Lisa Su officially unveiled their next-generation Ryzen processors and the successor to the hugely successful Ryzen 5000 series. The new family, the Ryzen 7000 series, will include up to 16 Zen 4 cores using TSMC’s optimized 5 nm manufacturing process.
The AMD Ryzen 7000 also officially marks the end of its long-lasting AM4 socket, with the new AM5 LGA1718 socket replacing it with a recently announced trio of new performance-driven chipsets, including the X670E, X670 and B650.
AMD Ryzen: A brief summary of five years of desktop upgrades
Since AMD’s original Ryzen (Zen) debuted in 2017, AMD has been constantly updating and developing its core architecture in a way that before Zen no one but AMD itself thought possible. Some of the major achievements that come with Zen include the new AM4 socket, which is undoubtedly one of the most successful in its history and brought DDR4 memory to the mass market. In 2018, AMD delivered its updated Zen + microarchitecture through Ryzen 2000, based on the more efficient and optimized 12 nm architecture of GlobalFoundries, along with a significant increase in IPC boot performance.
Moving forward in 2019, AMD debuted with the Zen 2 architecture, which was used as the basis for the Ryzen 3000 series of processors. Moving to TSMC’s high-performance 7nm manufacturing process, AMD provided higher levels of performance than Zen / Zen + , with a double-digit increase in IPC performance and a completely new design change through the use of chiplets.
This continued in 2020, when AMD began delivering its Zen 3 core with monumental profits compared to Zen 2, with up to 19% IPC gains over Zen 2, and the introduction of its Resizable BAR feature, higher levels. the L3 cache ever and the introduction of PCIe 4.0 on the desktop.
AMD Ryzen 7000: Transfer of Zen 4 and 5 nm to the consumer desktop computer
The latest in AMD’s arsenal and perhaps one of the most anticipated processors of the year, the AMD Ryzen 7000 family has finally been announced with some new features designed to provide a first-class desktop experience. We have long known that the Zen 4 microarchitecture is based on an optimized TSMC 5 nm manufacturing process, but so far we have not learned some of the more detailed subtleties.
Although the TSMC 5 nm manufacturing process was originally discovered in smartphones, with Apple and Huawei supporting the transition, Zen 4 marks the first use of 5 nm for desktop systems. The AMD Ryzen 7000 and Zen 4 are similar to the Zen 3, including a chip-based design with two crystal matrices (CCDs) based on TSMC’s 5 nm manufacturing process.
Although AMD isn’t going into much detail about the Zen 4 architecture today – they need to save some to discuss later in the year – for now, the company reveals that the Zen 4 will be available with 1MB of L2 cache on the CPU core. which is twice the amount of L2 cache as found on Zen 3 (and Zen 2) CPU cores. Meanwhile, the L3 cache will remain a topic for another day; AMD does not offer details about its L3 cache or whether we will see Zen 4 models with its 3D V-cache package.
Combined with this improvement in L2 cache, AMD is aiming for higher clock speeds, thanks to their architectural design and TSNC’s 5nm process. Officially, the company has so far claimed only “5GHz +” maximum turbo clock speeds, but in a demonstration video shown by Dr. Su, it was shown that AMD’s pre-production 16-core Ryzen 7000 chip rises above 5.5GHz, a significant increase from speeds below 5 GHz on current AMD Ryzen 5000 chips.
As a result of these improvements in cache, architecture (IPC) and clock speed, AMD is advertising an over 15% increase in single-threaded performance. And, checking AMD’s disclosure notes, this is based on the early notes of the Cinebench R23, comparing their pre-production 16C Ryzen 7000 chip with the 16C 5950X. Given the significant increase in clock speed that AMD demonstrates on this chip, this means that most of AMD’s performance improvements come from clock speeds, not IPC increases. However, Cinebench is a single benchmark and we currently have no additional information on what major architectural changes AMD has made.
Although AMD reveals that the Zen 4 / Ryzen 7000 receives instructions for AI acceleration. Like many other aspects of the chip, more details remain, but AMD seems to be adding some instructions for manipulating data with common AI data formats such as bfloat16 and int8 / int4.
For the Ryzen 7000, AMD also introduces a new 6 nm I / O matrix (IOD), which replaces the 14 nm IOD used in previous Zen 3 designs. Marking the first for AMD, the new IOD includes an iGPU, in this case based on AMD. So with the Ryzen 7000 generation, all AMD processors will technically also be APUs, as graphics are a major part of the chip’s design. What this means for the future of AMD’s monolithic desktop APUs is uncertain, but at a minimum it means that all (or almost all) of AMD’s processors will be suitable for use in systems without discrete graphics, which is not a big deal for consumers. systems, is a very big job for corporate / commercial systems.
The new IOD also gives AMD the opportunity to make some significant energy savings on the platform. Not only is TSMC’s 6nm process ahead of GlobalFoundries’ old 14nm process, but the design process has allowed AMD to incorporate many of the energy-saving technologies first developed for the Ryzen 6000 Mobile series, such as low-power add-ons and active capabilities. power management. As a result, the Ryzen 7000 should perform much better at idle loads and low usage, and it’s reasonable to assume that the IOD draws less power at load (at least with graphics disabled). Although at full load, with up to 16 cores running at over 5GHz, CCDs will still draw a lot of energy.
In terms of power, it is also worth noting that AMD states that the Ryzen 7000 will run at higher TDPs. Although AMD is not announcing official SKUs at this time, they explicitly note that the new AM5 platform allows TDP (CPU Package Power) of up to 170 watts in this generation, which is above the 105 W TDP of the AM4-based Ryzen 5000 series.
Last but not least, the AMD Zen 4 microarchitecture combined with the new IOD also brings many new features, including official support for PCIe 5.0, similar to Intel, introduced with its Alder Lake architecture (12th Gen Core). Combining the AMD Ryzen 7000 with an X670E, X670 or B650 motherboard will provide up to 24 x PCIe 5.0 tapes split between slots and storage devices, with support for up to 14 x USB ports, built-in MAC support for Wi-Fi 6E, and as the ability to provide up to four display outputs, including HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.
AMD AM5 socket: LGA1718 with three new chipsets, X670E, X670 and B650
As AMD’s announcement of the Ryzen 7000 family of processors officially puts an end to the previous AM4 socket, AMD has also revealed details about its new AM5 socket, also known as the LGA1718 socket. The AMD AM5 socket will include 1,718 pins connecting the processor to the motherboard socket, although AMD has not provided any information about the location of the pins.
One interesting thing we’ve already mentioned is that the AMD Ryzen 7000 will move to support processors up to 170 W on the Zen 4, as opposed to the 105 W TDP found on processors like AMD’s previous Ryzen 9 5950X. AMD is also using a new heat distributor (IHS) design of the Ryzen 7000 that AMD has made to allow compatibility with previous coolers with the AM4 socket. This means that theoretically, users who want to upgrade to the Ryzen 7000 will be able to use existing coolers with AM4 socket support.
The AM5 and Ryzen 7000 sockets also offer PCIe 5.0 on the table, with many storage vendors expected to announce a new wave of PCIe 5.0 storage devices designed to take advantage of all this extra bandwidth compared to PCIe 4.0. At the same time, we saw Intel introduce DDR5 memory on desktops through its 12th-generation Core series, although Intel offers support for both DDR5 and DDR4 memory. AMD is also using DDR5 in the future, but it seems that it will not use DDR4 memory or at least will offer DDR4 support initially for its premium chipsets.
Along with the announcement of the Ryzen 7000 family and its Zen 4 microarchitecture, AMD also announced three new chipsets for the AM5, X670E, X670 and B650. Starting with the flagship X670E ‘Extreme’ chipset, it is designed for the most premium models, focusing on extreme overclocking, with a full load of PCIe 5.0 support. Both the X670E and X670 cater to enthusiasts, with support for PCIe 5.0 graphics and upcoming PCIe 5.0 storage devices and support for dual-channel DDR5 memory.
AMD has not yet announced the full range of its support for DDR5, such as top speeds or what level of support for JEDEC, but we expect to learn more from AMD and motherboard vendors in the coming months. AMD mentions that the AM5 socket has a new SVI Gen 3 power infrastructure, but is not included in the technical specifications. AMD claims that this will improve support for additional power phases, fine-grained power control and faster power response capabilities.
Interestingly, AMD distinguishes the X670 in two market segments compared to previous iterations such as the X570, X470 and X370 chipsets. It seems that the most premium models such as ASUS ‘ROG Crosshair series, MSI’s MEG series and GIGABYTE’s Aorus Xtreme series will be based on the X670E to set it apart from the more focused mid-range and more affordable X670 options.
The B650 chipset, like previous AMD B-series sockets, will target mass users with more affordable options including PCIe 5.0 storage and dual-channel support …
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