We covered AMD’s “New Horizon” event yesterday, so if you haven’t seen that post be sure to check it out. Since the event AMD has released their official slides detailing ZEN, RYZEN, the AM4 platform and more! While we covered a lot of this yesterday there are still quite a lot of details in these slides.
So first lets start with the RYZEN chip. It will be an 8-core, 16-thread chip that operates at no lower than 3.4 GHz. Again, as we mentioned yesterday AMD did not release details on a boost speed, but the lowest speed of the chip will be 3.4 GHz. The chip will have 20 MB of combined cache (L2+L3) and will feature AMD’s SenseMI technology. According to the slide RYZEN will launch in Q1 of 2017.
SenseMI technology is a big part of ZEN and RYZEN. SenseMI has 5 different technologies built-in, which we will go over. First is Neural Net Prediction. AMD calls this a “true artificial network inside” every ZEN processor. It learns to predict and anticipate future decisions, pre-load instructions, and choose the best path through the CPU. It works in conjunction with Smart Prefetch which anticipates the location of future data accesses by application codes and prefetches vital data into local cache so its ready for immediate use.
Next is Pure Power and Precision Boost. There are 100 embedded sensors in Zen that will monitor temperature, speed, and voltage. It has adaptive control which manages real time for lower power usage. Precision Boost works in tandem with Pure Power to optimize performance. It has on-the-fly clock adjustments without halts or queue drains. It includes high precision tuning with 25 MHz increments.
Finally there is Extended Frequency Range (XFR), which is a temperature-bases boost function. It permits frequencies above and beyond ordinary limits based on the type of cooling you have. It is fully automated with no user intervention required.
RYZEN processors will run on AM4 motherboards. These new motherboards will bring with them native features AMD users have been missing out on like DDR4, PCIe Gen 3, USB 3.1 Gen 2, NVMe, and SATA Express.
2017 is going to be a big year for AMD in the processor market. In Q1 we will see “Summit Ridge” or RYZEN on the desktop side, then “Naples” for servers, and then finally “Raven Ridge” inside of notebooks. It will finally be good to see some competition in the CPU market!
