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AMD’s Zen-based Opteron processor to have 32 cores

With AMD's new Zen processors set to hit the market at the end of this year, we have begun hearing more and more about the company's plans for its new architecture. Recent leaks seem to show that AMD's Opteron series of processors will be getting a significant update when Zen arrives, with a much higher core count and improved efficiency thanks to the 14nm process node.

The leak comes from a computer engineer at CERN, who showcased slides giving away some key details about AMD's upcoming Opteron x86 processors.

amd_opteron_0

As the slide says, the new Zen architecture will use 14nm FinFET process technology. These new chips are set to deliver a 40 percent improvement on instructions per clock compared to the current generation of AMD processors. We will see chips sporting up to 32 physical cores utilising symmetrical multithreading and these new processors will be capable of supporting up to eight channels of DDR4 RAM.

The first Zen chips will be launching at the end of 2016 but we will likely see Zen-based APUs as well as server CPUs (like the Opteron) come in 2017.

KitGuru Says: We will be hearing a lot about Zen throughout the rest of this year leading up to its eventual release. Are any of you holding out for AMD's Zen architecture? 

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18 comments

  1. Those are some big claims…
    Plus you would have to get dev support for mass multi-threading to get much of an improvement.

  2. I feel like I’ve been lied to… I’ve been holding off replacing my broken am3+ board from 2012 because I thought they were releasing new stuff early this year and now I’m hearing it’s later this year. I’ve already waited 4 ****ING years… 4!!!
    I may as well bite the bullet and remortgage the house so I can buy a decent Intel chip to replace my 8350.

  3. Opterons and Xeon CPUs with high core count are not meant for you to play games or run poorly coded software that common folk use. These CPUs go into servers that run applications that inherently and vastly more threaded by nature gobbling up as many cores as they can be given. The HPC community write code that extracts every last bit of performance possible from the multicore systems. Customers even request special instructions be part of the ISA just for their special application they are developing. Intel does this for their customers. AMD also does this based on customer requests, this is why we hear about strange new instructions that games and the vast majority of mainstream apps will never use, it was never meant for them the target users are in the HPC space.

  4. lel nub

  5. 8 channels of DDR4. Finally one bottleneck is alleviated.

    You can totally choke triple channel DDR3 even with i7-920 quad-core (8 HT) from 2009.

    Imagine what a true eight core i7 does to four channel DDR4?

    I hope AMD can come back into real competition, esp with higher end SMP on workstations and servers.

    We really need prices to come down at the high end. Intel has been allowed to skim the cream for too long with practically no competition at the high end.

  6. These are server chips

  7. I been waiting awile.. but truth be told there no point in building a new system until black friday anywazs.

  8. can we have the new chips pin-less like the intel chips are.. please and thnxs

  9. Just out of curiosity, but what difference does it make if the pins are on the actual chip itself? Is it just a matter of your personal preference?

  10. no pins = no bent pins… I know its trivial matter since u never take the cpu after u installed it in the first place… how ever I seen people bend and brake there cpu’s trying to re-thermal past them.. which one should do ever 2-3 years …

    pull the heat sink and I see the chip come with it even when the lock is still in place..

  11. The exact same can be said for LGA sockets, if you go on eBay you see tons of pin damaged motherboards.

  12. On the other hand there are some very stupid people, couple months ago I’ve spent whole week convincing a guy that he didn’t pull all pins off of his i5 CPU.

  13. I see, fair enough. Still, I can see that happening with an Intel motherboard but I get your point.

  14. I agree. When removing a heatsink sometimes it rips the CPU out of the socket with it and can bend the pins. So yeah, I would prefer the pins on the motherboard instead of the CPU.

  15. Remortgage your house? You really need to get your priorities right. That’s alarming.

  16. Just run computer with some program to stress cpu before doing it and take off cooler while paste is still warm. It will come off easily. I always do it with AMD cpus. But yes, sometimes paste can still be damn hard, you have to twist coler and not rip it upwards.

  17. Whaaaaaaat? Seriously?

  18. Yup, I have hexa i7 5820 with X99 board and 32GB quad channel DDR4. pure 49GB/s of bandwidth in comparison with AMD’s 20GB/s. Rendering in Vray is twice as fast. Imagine 8 channels hmmmmm around 80GB/s or even 100GB/s of awesomeness.