AMD doesn’t want to give Intel a minute’s respite, especially in one of the most important markets of monolithic processors or laptop SoCs, where AMD made its first appearance with the AMD Ryzen 4000 series based on their Renoir Architecture this year, as they plan to go to war in 2021 and 2022 as well.
AMD Ryzen SoC Roadmap for 2021 and 2022
In the case of the AMD Ryzen SoC roadmap for 2021 and 2022, we see that in the first year of it, there is no more remarkable information than what we already knew from previous leaks. .
We have the AMD Cezanne-H and Cezanne-U as direct evolutions of the current AMD Ryzen 4000, the monolithic Ryzen that were released primarily for laptops in 2020, whose novelty will be the use of the Zen 3 kernel, with which AMD intends to remove the performance crown from Intel’s Tiger Lake portable processors.
Another important novelty for 2021 can be found in Van Gogh, which, as you can see, is a configuration of very low consumption by operating only with 9 W. Using Zen 2 instead of Zen 3 makes us think that it would be at most a 4-core solution, as that would explain the use of Zen 2 cores instead of Zen 3 cores, as there is no 8-core CCX Zen 3 and the minimum configuration is 6 active cores.
In 2022, AMD will not stop its annual cadence when launching new monolithic SoCs and it will do so with a leap in quality by including an integrated GPU with Navi 2 or RDNA 2 architecture in both AMD Rembrandt designs, but the biggest leap will be the use of Zen 3+ pouches, which, by name, infers that it is an improved version of the current Zen 3.
The roadmap also gives us clues as to how AMD will cope with the arrival of DDR5 memory on our PCs.Yes, it won’t do with the Zen 4 switchover as it was believed, at least as far as the monolithic versions of the AMD Ryzen go, but it will do so using suitable Zen 3 cores. It is possible that the changes in Zen 3+ will be limited to supporting DDR5 memory, but we doubt that in AMD they will not take advantage of this to slightly improve the CPI in Zen 3+ cores.Although not with a leap like that of Zen 2 towards Zen 3 but sufficient to justify a new generation of processors.
Using the TSMC 6nm node, which is compatible with the 7nm node, not only gives us clues about a revision of AMD SoCs under this node, but also opens up the possibility of using said node for both processors and GPU from AMD itself.
Let’s not forget that the theoretical density increase at the 6nm node is 18%, AMD can therefore use it to implement the necessary architectural changes to support DDR5, but also the changes in a slight increase in IPC. This makes us wonder if, as with the 12nm node derived from the 14nm which gave birth to the Zen + based processors, we will see the same in the case of the Zen 3+.
A possible AMD Ryzen 6000 line based on Zen 3+?
The Ryzen 5000 range will be divided into two families, on the one hand we have AMD Vermeer, which is the desktop Ryzen 5000 in an MCM or chiplet configuration, on the other hand the AMD Cezanne, which will be the Ryzen 5000 in a monolithic configuration. and therefore all integrated into a single chip.
If AMD isn’t really going to support DDR5 memory for the first time with a next-gen core, Zen 4, but we’re aware of Rembrandt’s existence, that doesn’t just make us wonder if we’ll see. a new line under the name AMD Ryzen 6000 which uses Zen 3 cores, which replaces the AMD Vermeer, but with support for DDR5 memory for desktop systems.
Is it possible that at this time of next year we are talking about the launch of the AMD Ryzen 6000 based on Zen3 + and DDR5? At least that’s what we can sway from this leak, although this is something only AMD can confirm, if the leaks are true then Zen 4 will have to wait a bit longer.
Van Gogh, Pollock and DragonCrest
Other processors that grab the roadmap’s attention are Van Gogh, Pollock and DragonCrest, which would be very, very low power processors.
Van Gogh and DragonCrest both appear to be the same processor when it comes to specsWe do not understand what differences there would be between the two models but the specifications would be the same in both cases. Using two different codenames doesn’t mean anything and is part of AMD nomenclature.
For example, AMD has decided to call the AMD Renoir-U built into the Ryzen 5000 line for laptops as Lucienne, and the Cezanne-U that AMD is launching in 2022 will be codenamed Barcelo-U. AMD may therefore have multiple codenames for the same processor on its roadmaps, one for each year of release.
As for Pollock, this would be the last AMD processor that AMD will launch on the market based on the first generation Zen and the 14nm node. We do not know for the moment what the target market is, but because of its consumption of 5 W it seems that it would be in the niche of embedded processors.
