AMD Zen processors will hit the market at the end of 2016 at the earliest

Statements from Devinder Kumar, the head of finance at AMD, make it clear that the Zen-generation processors will not hit the market until late 2016 at the earliest and possibly early 2017. According to Kumar, the final tape-out of Zen is still being worked on.

The statements, made by Kumar at an investor conference, can be read on Seeking Alpha. According to the CFO, the Zen architecture is currently in the final stages of finalizing the chip design for production, but there is no tape-out yet. Only when this is available can the first attempts to actually produce the chips begin. It will then take months before mass production can be set in motion. According to Kumar, Zen’s tape-out will be ready in a few months and manufacturers will then receive the first samples.

However, Kumar also states that it will take 12 to 14 months before chip production can start after a tape-out is ready. AMD has not yet officially announced when its processors and GPUs that are made on the 14nm finfet process will appear on the market. Kumar says he expects to be more specific about the delivery of new products during the earnings call in January 2016.

When it released its quarterly results in October, AMD said it was on track for the promised 40 percent increase in instructions per tick with the Zen architecture. CEO Lisa Su said that the Zen processors should be available in 2016, but will only make a noticeable contribution to the company’s turnover in 2017. Judging by the new statements from the CFO, it seems likely that AMD will announce the Zen processors at the end of 2016. It is doubtful whether they will actually come on the market in that year, given the phase in which the chips are now.

In November, GlobalFoundries announced that it had successfully produced the first test chip for AMD on the 14nm finfet process. However, it is not clear what kind of chip that is; it can also be an early test. In addition to a new processor, AMD is working on new GPUs. These are also made with the 14nm finfet process. Most likely, AMD’s new graphics cards with these chips will hit the market in the course of 2016. On Tuesday, the manufacturer released information about options that GPUs will receive in the coming year. AMD has not yet provided specific information about which graphics cards will appear when, but rumors speak of an introduction of a new series of Radeon R9 400 cards with ‘Arctic Island’ GPUs in March 2016.

AMD unveiled Zen architecture details in May