AMD Zen6 details revealed: 2nm process, 256 cores!

Before AMD Zen5 architecture products were even released, quite a few details of the Zen6 architecture were revealed, which looks extremely exciting.

At the end of September this year, MLID leaked some of the initial news of Zen6, including the upgrade of the manufacturing process to CCD 2nm, IOD 3nm, CCD again upgraded to native 32 cores, IPC performance increased by another 10%, support for 16-channel memory, the inclusion of AI/ML FP16 floating-point instructions, and so on.

According to MLID's latest claims, the EPYC Snapdragon for the Zen6 architecture will come in a special version, EPYC-E, where the E may stand for Edge, which means it is geared towards communications and edge computing, which doesn't require too many cores and can't consume too much power.

There are two versions of EPYC-E, a standard version with up to 64 cores, support for eight-channel DDR5 6400+MHz high-frequency memory, and expansion connectivity offering 64 PCIe 5.0 and 32 PCIe 6.0.

Yes, Zen6 will introduce PCIe 6.0, the relevant specification was released in January 2022, with a unidirectional bandwidth of 8GB/s per channel, which at x16 is 128GB/s.

The second is the entry level version with the specs halved, which means up to 32 cores, quad-lane memory, 32 PCIe 5.0 and 16 PCIe 6.0.

Since there are up to 32 cores per CCD natively, the EPYC-E Bar Standard and Entry Edition will only need two and one CCD respectively, leaving the rest of the space available to configure other different units.

For example, the NCD, or Network Compute Die, is based on the acquired Pensado Salina.

Then there is the FPGA Die, for example, and any other module that needs relevant functionality to be extended, which can be flexibly configured.

Obviously, this is not the maximum power of the Zen6 EPYC, with a full-blooded 16-channel memory, it would only take 8 CCDs to form a massive 256 cores and 512 threads!

However, MLID also claims that there will be a 3nm process version at the same time, and a single CCD will still be up to 16 cores, probably for some less demanding areas.

As for the Zen6c, I haven't seen it for a while, so it may no longer be classified, or it may not have leaked yet.

Note: The above information for the netizens in advance exposure information, the final detailed specifications configuration to the official announcement shall prevail.