AMD ‘Next Horizon’ Event Scheduled For Tuesday Could Mark The Coming Of Zen 2
AMD has an event scheduled for this coming Tuesday which is entitled "AMD Next Horizon". Heading over to the landing page on AMD's site for the event presents nothing but a blank page at this point, but we expect for things to start filling in November 6th.
If you recall, back in early December 2016 AMD held a "New Horizon" event that revealed the first details on its Zen processors built on 14nm Summit Ridge architecture. At the event, AMD first referenced the Ryzen brand name and championed a 40 percent uplift in instructions per clock (IPC).
By all accounts, Tuesday's event will be focused squarely on the Zen 2 architecture. And while we were first introduced to Zen and Zen+ architectures with mainstream Ryzen processors, it looks as though the first Zen 2 processors will be from the EPYC server family. In its most recent earnings release, AMD Corporate VP Laura Graves stated that on Tuesday the company "will discuss innovation of AMD products and technologies, specifically designed for the datacenter on industry-leading 7-nanometer process technology."
The next-generation EPYC processors will be based on AMD's 7nm Rome architecture at a time when Intel is extracting as much life as humanly possibly from its 14nm architecture. In fact, Intel's first 10nm products for the consumer market won't arrive until late 2019, while its 10nm Ice Lake Xeon-SP processors for servers -- which would compete with EPYC -- aren't slated to arrive until 2020.
In recent months, we've heard rumors that Zen 2, and EPYC specifically, will offer a 13 percent average performance boost over Zen+ processors in scientific applications. It's also rumored that 7nm EPYC processors will be available with up to 64 physical cores, with the potential for an astonishing 128 available threads.
