AMD Next-Gen Zen 4 Ryzen CPUs & RDNA 3 Radeon RX GPUs On Track For 2022 Launch

During its Q2 2021 investors call, AMD's CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, confirmed that their next-generation Zen 4 Ryzen CPUs and RDNA 3 Radeon RX GPUs are on track for launch in 2022.

AMD Reaffirms That Its Next-Gen 5nm Zen 4 'Ryzen' CPUs & RDNA 3 'Radeon RX' GPUs Are On Track For Launch in 2022

The AMD Zen 4 and RDNA 3 core architectures will lay the foundation for next-generation CPUs & GPUs. AMD will use these two IPs to power its Ryzen and Radeon 2022 lineup which means that it will be a grand year of high-performance launches from AMD once again. To make things fun, AMD will have not one but two brand new Ryzen Desktop families in 2022, one based on Zen 3 with 3D V-Cache and one based on Zen 4 known as Raphael.

We remain on-track to launch next-generation products in 2022, including our Zen 4 processors built with industry-leading 5nm process technology and our RDNA 3 GPUs.

AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su

As for AMD's GPU family, we can expect the next-gen Radeon RX (7000) series to pack a whole lot of performance and being the first gaming chips in the industry to rock an MCM (Multi-Chip Module) design.

With that said, AMD did state that supply constraints will continue till throughout 2021 and things will ease down with the start of 2022. Regardless, AMD believes that it can grow substantially in the second half of 2021. AMD also highlighted that it has begun initial shipments of its next-gen CDNA 2 architecture-based Instinct MI200 accelerator.

Here's Everything We Know About AMD's Raphael Ryzen 'Zen 4' Desktop CPUs

The next-generation Zen 4 based Ryzen Desktop CPUs will be codenamed Raphael and will replace the Zen 3 based Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPUs that are codenamed, Vermeer. From the information we currently have, Raphael CPUs will be based on the 5nm Zen 4 core architecture & will feature 6nm I/O dies in a chiplet design. AMD has hinted at upping the core counts of its next-gen mainstream desktop CPUs so we can expect a slight bump from the current max of 16 cores and 32 threads.

The brand new Zen 4 architecture is rumored to deliver up to 25% IPC gain over Zen 3 and hit clock speeds of around 5 GHz.

‘Mark, Mike, and the teams have done a phenomenal job. We are as good as we are with the product today, but with our ambitious roadmaps, we are focusing on Zen 4 and Zen 5 to be extremely competitive.

‘There will be more core counts in the future – I would not say those are the limits! It will come as we scale the rest of the system.’

AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su via Anandtech

AMD's Rick Bergman on Next-Gen Zen 4 Cores For Ryzen CPUs

Q- How much of the performance gains delivered by AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs, which are expected to use a 5nm TSMC process and might arrive in early 2022, will come from instructions per clock (IPC) gains as opposed to core count and clock speed increases.

Bergman: “[Given] the maturity of the x86 architecture now, the answer has to be, kind of, all of the above. If you looked at our technical document on Zen 3, it was this long list of things that we did to get that 19% [IPC gain]. Zen 4 is going to have a similar long list of things, where you look at everything from the caches, to the branch prediction, [to] the number of gates in the execution pipeline. Everything is scrutinized to squeeze more performance out.”

“Certainly [manufacturing] process opens an additional door for us to [obtain] better performance-per-watt and so on, and we'll take advantage of that as well.”

AMD EVP, Rick Bergman, via The Street

The Raphael Ryzen Desktop CPUs are also expected to feature RDNA 2 onboard graphics which means that just like Intel's mainstream desktop lineup, AMD's mainstream lineup will also feature iGPU graphics support. As for the platform itself, we will be getting the brand new AM5 platform which will feature support for DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0. The Zen 4 based Raphael Ryzen CPUs aren't expected till late 2022 so there's still a lot of time left in the launch. The lineup will compete against Intel's Raptor Lake 13th Gen Desktop CPU lineup.

AMD Zen CPU / APU Roadmap:

Zen Architecture	Zen 6	Zen 5 (C)	Zen 4 (C)	Zen 3+	Zen 3	Zen 2	Zen+	Zen 1
Core Codename	Morpheus	Nirvana (Zen 5) Prometheus (Zen 5C)	Persphone (Zen 4) Dionysus (Zen 4C)	Warhol	Cerebrus	Valhalla	Zen+	Zen
CCD Codename	TBA	Eldora	Durango	TBC	Brekenridge	Aspen Highlands	N/A	N/A
Process Node	3nm/2nm?	4nm/3nm	5nm/4nm	6nm	7nm	7nm	12nm	14nm
Server	EPYC Venice (6th Gen)	EPYC Turin (5th Gen)	EPYC Genoa (4th Gen) EPYC Siena (4th Gen) EPYC Bergamo (4th Gen)	N/A	EPYC Milan (3rd Gen)	EPYC Rome (2nd Gen)	N/A	EPYC Naples (1st Gen)
High-End Desktop	TBA	Ryzen Threadripper 8000 (Shamida Peak)	Ryzen Threadripper 7000 (Storm Peak)	N/A	Ryzen Threadripper 5000 (Chagal)	Ryzen Threadripper 3000 (Castle Peak)	Ryzen Threadripper 2000 (Coflax)	Ryzen Threadripper 1000 (White Haven)
Mainstream Desktop CPUs	Ryzen **** (Medusa)	Ryzen 8000 (Granite Ridge)	Ryzen 7000 (Raphael)	Ryzen 6000 (Warhol / Cancelled)	Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer)	Ryzen 3000 (Matisse)	Ryzen 2000 (Pinnacle Ridge)	Ryzen 1000 (Summit Ridge)
Mainstream Desktop . Notebook APU	TBA	Ryzen 8000 (Strix Point) Ryzen **** (Krackan Point)	Ryzen 7000 (Phoenix)	Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt)	Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne) Ryzen 6000 (Barcelo)	Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) Ryzen 5000 (Lucienne)	Ryzen 3000 (Picasso)	Ryzen 2000 (Raven Ridge)
Low-Power Mobile	TBA	Ryzen 8000 (Escher)	Ryzen 7000 (Mendocino)	TBA	TBA	Ryzen 5000 (Van Gogh) Ryzen 6000 (Dragon Crest)	N/A	N/A

Here's Everything We Know About AMD's Radeon RX 7000 'RDNA 3' Navi 3X GPUs

The AMD RDNA 3 based Radeon RX 7000 gaming graphics card lineup will feature the Navi 3X GPUs and we have so far seen leaks around three key chips. These include the Navi 31, Navi 32, and Navi 33. The RDNA 3 family is expected to utilize the TSMC 5nm process node and will be leveraging the latest packaging technologies such as chiplet (MCM) design which we have seen on Ryzen Desktop CPUs.

AMD has also talked about its next-generation GPUs and how David Wang & his team at RTG brought RDNA 2 to life. They are extremely happy with the results (performance per watt / general performance gains) which were achieved with 2nd Generation RDNA cores and the same philosophy will be used in designing the third generation RDNA architecture or RDNA 3.

Also on GPUs, David Wang and the team focus on our long term roadmaps, and we pick the right mix of risk to get innovation, performance, and predictability. Bets are made, and we track the progress. We’re happy with RDNA2 on performance per watt and overall performance, and we have a lot of focus on RDNA3.

via Anandtech

AMD's Rick Bergman on Next-Gen RDNA 3 GPUs For Radeon RX Graphics Cards

Q- Whether AMD is aiming for its RDNA 3 GPUs, which will use a more advanced manufacturing process, to deliver performance-per-watt improvements similar to the 50%-plus improvements delivered by its RDNA 2 GPUs, and its future plans for the Infinity Cache technology used by RDNA 2 GPUs.

Bergman: “Let's step back and talk about the benefits of both. So why did we target, pretty aggressively, performance per watt [improvements for] our RDNA 2 [GPUs]. And then yes, we have the same commitment on RDNA 3.”

“It just matters so much in many ways, because if your power is too high -- as we've seen from our competitors -- suddenly our potential users have to buy bigger power supplies, very advanced cooling solutions. And in a lot of ways, very importantly, it actually drives the [bill of materials] of the board up substantially This is a desktop perspective. And invariably, that either means the retail price comes up, or your GPU cost has to come down.”

“So [there are] actually a lot of efficiencies...if you can improve your perf-per-watt substantially. On the notebook side, that's of course even more obvious, because you're in a very constrained space, you can just bring more performance to that platform again without some exotic cooling solutions...We focused on that on RDNA 2. It's a big focus on RDNA 3 as well.”

“On Infinity Cache, it's somewhat linked to that as well, to a certain degree. If you've been in graphics for a long time, you realize there's a pretty good correlation between memory bandwidth and performance. And so typically, the way you do it is you jack up your memory speed and widen your [memory] bus to open up performance. Unfortunately, both of those things drive up power [consumption].”

AMD EVP, Rick Bergman, via The Street

Recent rumors have indicated that the flagship Navi 31 GPU will house 60 WGPs, over 15,000 cores, and feature a 3x performance uplift over the Big Navi 21 GPU. The Navi 33 GPU has also been reported to offer 80 compute units, 5120 cores, and more performance than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. AMD has already patented an active bridge chiplet solution for its next-generation GPUs which comes with an integrated cache and interconnects the multiple dies featured on the Navi 3X (RDNA 3) GPUs, you can read more on that here.