AMD’s next-gen Zen 5 CPUs to release later this year

Reports suggest that Zen 5 based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs from AMD could start mass production in Q3 this year on TSMC’s 4nm and 3nm process.

In CPU manufacturing, Intel usually makes its own processors. But that’s not the same for the likes of AMD and others.

These days, AMD designs the CPUs and TSMC makes the CPUs for them. Based in Taiwan, TSMC is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer. TSMC also makes CPUs and GPUs for companies like Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and others.

In 2022, AMD announced the release of the Zen 4 based Ryzen 7000 series processors. These processors are built on the Zen 4 architecture and were made on a 5nm process.

Zen 4 is the same architecture that powers the conventional Ryzen 7000 CPUs, 3D V-Cache based X3D CPUs and also recently launched Ryzen 8000G APUs that come with relatively more powerful built-in GPUs.

Now it seems AMD is all set to release Zen 5 architecture based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs later this year.

3nm Wafers To Enter Production In Q2

Taiwan based UDN reports (translated), via Dan Nystedt on Twitter, that AMD is going to launch Zen 5 based CPUs this year.

This news comes from the information that TSMC is going to start mass production of the 3nm wafers to be used in Zen 5 processors from the second quarter this year. However, full mass production will take some time. Still, the production capacity is expected to increase month by month.

The report mentions that AMD is expected to introduce the Zen 5 architecture based processors in desktops, notebooks and even servers. This means that the Ryzen 9000 CPUs are included in it.

The report also how AMD’s launch of Zen 5 architecture will launch along with TSMC entering the mass production of 3nm process. 3nm process based chips are expected to power AMD Ryzen 9000 CPU series.

However, there are rumors floating around that 3nm process based chips will not be used in whole Ryzen 9000 CPUs. There are some suggestions that only Zen 5c cores are expected to be based on 3nm. Zen 5c cores are smaller and slower cores with same architecture that of larger and faster ones. The usual Zen 5 based big cores are expected to be based on 4nm process instead.

So far, nothing is confirmed. But we expect AMD to announce or even release Zen 5 based Ryzen 9000 CPU series in the third quarter this year. It’s interesting to see how big architectural and performance improvements it offers.

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