AMD Works on "Zen 5" Micro-architecture Already

AMD late Monday posted a video of key people associated with the company's successful Ryzen processor family, to walk down memory lane and stare into the future, on its official YouTube channel. Mike Clark, who holds the designation of Sr. Fellow Design Engineering at AMD, stated that he is "already working on Zen 5." Going by AMD's naming convention, the number next to "Zen" denotes major micro-architecture generation since "Zen" and any "+" following the number denotes refinement to a newer silicon fabrication node. "Zen+," for example, is a refinement of "Zen 1" or simply "Zen" to the newer 12 nm process, and allows AMD engineers to make minor improvements without any major design changes.

On the other hand, "Zen 2" presents AMD with the opportunity to bring about major design changes (think "more than 4 cores per CCX"), or even improvements within the core itself. "Zen 5" is hence the fifth major micro-architecture chance since "Zen," although it would be premature to call it "6th generation Ryzen," as there could be several "+" stopgaps between "Zen +" and "Zen 5." To ensure people don't dismiss Clark's words for a slip of the tongue, AMD even annotated "Yes, he said Zen 5, see Endnote," and in the Endnote that has a lot of CYA statements, confirmed that "Zen 5" is a legit internal code-name for a micro-architecture AMD is working on.