AMD Confirms “Zen 3” with 64 MB 3DV Cache for Q1-2022, “Zen 4” Later, PCIe Gen5 + DDR5

AMD today celebrated 5 Years of Ryzen, with a special video presentation by John Taylor, AMD Chief Marketing Officer, and Robert Hallock, Director of Technical Marketing. The company confirmed that its next Ryzen processors will come out only in Q1-2022. These processors will feature updated CPU core complex dies (CCDs) that combine the existing “Zen 3” microarchitecture with 64 MB of additional 3D Vertical Cache memory. AMD claims that this change improves performance by anywhere between 4% to 25% for games, amounting to the kind of performance uplifts you’d expect from a new processor generation.

AMD did not reveal whether the updated processors will be branded within the existing Ryzen 5000 series, or newer Ryzen 6000 series. If you remember, the “Zen+” microarchitecture enabled AMD to come up with a whole new generation, the Ryzen 2000 series, despite models 4% IPC uplifts, albeit significant improvements to the boosting behavior, resulting in improved multi-threaded performance. What remains unclear is whether the updated “Zen 3” chips with 3DV Cache will herald a new platform, or whether these chips will be built on the existing Socket AM4 with DDR4 memory and PCI-Express Gen 4.

AMD’s next truly next-generation Ryzen processor will come out within 2022, the company confirmed. Based on the new “Zen 4” microarchitecture, the company is targeting significant IPC uplifts, that will help it compete with Intel; but more importantly, introduce the new Socket AM5. An LGA package with 1,718 pins, AM5 will enable next-gen I/O. The “Zen 4” based next-gen Ryzen will indeed feature the combination of DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5, letting AMD level up to Intel on that front.

AMD’s 2022 roadmap for desktop Ryzen processors looks quite similar to its 2020 roadmap. The company had initially refreshed its Ryzen 3000 series with a trio of Ryzen 3000XT SKUs that missed the mark of being viable stopgaps; but followed it up with the groundbreaking Ryzen 5000 “Zen 3” series toward the end of the year. 2021 will go down as an year without any new Ryzen processor generation.

Another aspect of Socket AM5 confirmed by AMD in the presentation was backwards compatibility of coolers with Socket AM4. You’ll be able to retain your AM4-compatible coolers for AM5, without needing any adapters or upgrades to your coolers’ retention modules.

As for a concrete response to Intel’s Hybrid CPU core designs that the company will be pioneering on the desktop PC with “Alder Lake,” AMD doesn’t appear to be having a hybrid core design of its own, but hinted at the possibility that it is working on a new power-management solution built from the ground up, which will probably run a homogeneous set of CPU cores across very different performance/Watt bands, while retaining a consistent ISA. AMD has given this a rather uninteresting name—Power Management Framework.

Find the AMD presentation here: