AMD confirms Zen 2 7nm CPUs will begin Sampling in Late 2018
AMD is scheduled to launch their second-gen Ryzen chips in April. The new chips will be built using the 12nm process that will offer lower power with higher clock frequencies, but don’t expect a big gain in performance until the Zen 2 7nm processor family. These new 3000 series CPUs, as confirmed by AMD, will begin sampling to different segments of the market by the end of 2018.
Next-Gen Zen 2 7nm “Matisse” CPU Sampling planned before the end of This Year, Launch in Spring of 2019
AMD recently hosted a webinar to celebrate a one year anniversary of their Ryzen “Summit Ridge” processors. During the webinar, Jim Anderson, AMD’s senior VP talked about the progress Ryzen made and financial gains they’d achieved as a result of strong sales throughout the last 12 months.
However, the most interesting bit of info from Anderson’s claims is regarding AMD’s next generation Zen 2 CPU design. Anderson said in a statement:
“Zen 2 and Zen 3 represent our new microarchitecture developments for the future cores that will come out and be used in a number of different products… Our execution on Zen 2 I’m really pleased with that, it’s executing very well. Zen 3 as well, we’ve made a lot of great progress on those new cores.
“We’ll start to see on Zen 2, which is on 7nm process technology, you’ll start to see initial samples in some specific market segments across AMD before the end of the year for those products. But when I look forward to the product roadmap for Zen 2 and Zen 3, I’m really excited about what I see – very, very competitive processor cores and products that are planned based on that.”
This is the first time AMD has spoken publicly about the potential sampling timings of their Zen 2 processors. Keep in mind, though, that sampling definitely doesn’t mean release, but it does lend credence to a 2019 release. If all things go as planned, you can expect to see AMD Zen 2 7nm CPUs, codenamed Matisse, around spring of next year.
The 7nm node will bring significant advantages compared to 14nm. According to GlobalFoundries, the die size will be more than halved, with clock speeds getting up in the 5GHz range. Overall, you can expect a performance boost of up to 40% over the last generation.
Anderson is confident that Ryzen product line would help the company regain their historical share levels that they have enjoyed in the past.
“Typical share levels we’ve seen in AMD history is low-20s in desktop and high teens in notebook. And when I look at the strength of the Ryzen products I don’t see any reason we can’t get back to those share levels.”