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AMD Zen 3 CPUs could be more powerful than expected with double digit IPC boost

AMD Zen 3 will reportedly feature a hefty instruction per clock increase over its predecessor, Zen 2

AMD Zen 3

AMD Zen 3 will feature a hefty instruction per clock increase over its predecessor, new rumours claim. The third generation of the Zen architecture is not expected to be all that dissimilar from Zen 2, beyond the shift to the new and improved N7+ process from TSMC. However, rumours now suggest that Zen 3 could be more exciting that we first imagined.

Booting the Zen 3 rumour mill back up to life, word comes from tech forum Chiphell and user Zoo. These remain unconfirmed at this time, and we’re unlikely to get official word from AMD on this matter for a long, long time – like months even.

The post claims an IPC increase of 1x%, so we’re potentially talking a double digit improvement with Zen 3. An engineering sample is also said to be running at 100-200MHz faster than Zen 2, which is promising for a product nearly a year out from launch. The frequency bump likely stems from the improvements TSMC – AMD’s foundry partner of choice for its high-performance silicon – is able to offer its customers with the shift from the N7 process node to N7+.

We’ve already seen some of the changes AMD will be making with Zen 3, such as the merging of L3 cache within a CCD. This will effectively merge the four-core CCX design of today’s AMD chips. With AMD actively tweaking the design, Zen 3 already appears to be a far greater divergence from what Zen+ was to Zen – a moderate upgrade.

Zen 3 is suspected to be the final form of AMD’s AM4 socket, which has been the prized partner of Ryzen ever since its introduction back in 2017. The company is suspected to be adopting a new platform in the datacentre with its “Genoa” processors, and client-side will likely follow suit as AMD’s backwards compatibility promise expires.

RedGamingTech (via HotHardware) also claims to have a source offering vague information correlating that of Chiphell user Zoo – adding that AMD’s IPC improvement is at least greater than 8% with Zen 3.

AMD has confirmed that Zen 3 has reached the end of its design journey and is now finalised on the 7nm+ node from TSMC – which recently entered volume production.

But our line of sight on Zen 3 still remains murky and open to the vagaries of the CPU market and its roadmaps. AMD talked more openly about Zen 2 at an event in November, 2018, so we may see it follow suit with concrete information on Zen 3 this winter, too.