AMD Zen 2 architecture uses 7nm cores and 14nm i/o die

AMD uses a new way of linking all cores together for its processors based on the Zen 2 architecture. An I/O die is placed in the middle, which is made at 14nm. The core dies are made at 7nm. AMD is already working on Zen 4.

AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster gave the first details about the Zen 2 architecture at the New Horizon event. AMD uses that architecture for its Epyc 2 processors, which are due out next year. Presumably, the same architecture will also come to consumer processors in the form of Ryzen 2 at a later date.

AMD is renewing its Infinity Fabric that connects the different dies that contain the cores. Current Epyc, Ryzen, and Threadripper CPUs, for example, consist of four dies, all connected via the Infinity Fabric. With the Zen 2 architecture, AMD places one I/O die in the middle, which is connected to the core dies, which AMD calls CPU chiplets, via a second generation of the Infinity Fabric. The I/O is made on a 14nm process while the CPU cores are made on 7nm on the TSMC process.

The new architecture offers double the density of cores, while cutting energy consumption per operation in half. Those improvements are probably due to the move to the smaller 7nm process. Furthermore, AMD claims to have doubled floating point performance, and Zen 2’s branch prediction and pre-fetching have also been improved. In addition, the vector width has been doubled to 256bit.

The design shown is of an Epyc 2 processor, of which AMD will supply variants with up to 64 cores. Currently AMD ships its Epyc processors with up to 32 cores.

According to AMD, the developments of Zen 2 are on schedule, samples of the Epyc 2 processors are currently being sent. The server processors should be released in the course of next year. AMD is also already working on next generations, such as Zen 3, which is a further development of Zen 2 and will be made on a 7nm + process. In the presentation, AMD also shows that it is already working on Zen 4, which architecture is probably made on an even smaller process, but details about this are not yet known.

AMD CEO Lisa Su shows off Epyc 2 processor