So this is the last chapter of the information I recently received from one of my sources in AMD. I asked about AMD's plans for a Raven Ridge refresh on the 7nm node and can confirm that it is indeed happening and the company plans to roll them out "roughly 4 months after the launch of Navi". Since Navi is launching on 7/7 that would put the expected announcement/launch date roughly in late-November. That leaves the company with two options, either utilize the holiday season and launch it in late November or do a big reveal at CES 2020.
AMD 7nm Ryzen APUs won't be ready till 4 months after Navi; Holiday Season 2019 or CES 2020 launch?
In any case, it looks like we should not expect 7nm Ryzen APUs to land before November at the earliest. If AMD decides to not use the holiday season in late November, they will have to go for a CES 2020 launch. Since their huge Threadripper 64 Core is slated for a late Q4 2019 launch as well, [speculation] I would not be surprised to see both of these things debut at the same time [/speculation]. So if you are someone who was waiting for the APUs and was expecting them to arrive soon after thee Ryzen 3000 CPUs, now you have the information to make an informed decision.
The lineup, which I am going to call "Raven Ridge 7nm Refresh" for lack of a better term, is going to be succeeding the existing RR lineup that is fabricated on the 14nm process. My source did mention the word "raven ridge refresh on the 7nm node" which makes me believe that this is going to be a 7nm shrink of the 14nm parts allowing for much higher clocks and an updated architecture while retaining the basic configurations. If 7nm Ryzen 3000 CPUs are anything to go by, this is going to result in some impressive performance gains while increasing economies of scale for the company and bringing down cost without hurting margins.
Raven Ridge APUs on the 7nm node are going to be the perfect choice for consumers that are looking for an HTPC build or a casual All-In-One build and want to conserve on the footprint. Interestingly, Raven Ridge 7nm is going to go up against Tiger Lake parts from Intel which are expected to have a maximum compute of 2 TFLOPs. Things are certainly going to be very interesting as we enter 2020 and competition in our corner of the tech world is heating up like anything as both Intel, AMD and NVIDIA come out guns blazing. And the best part? In all of this blood shed, it is the consumer that will win.
