With the launch of the AMD Ryzen XT processor series comes news from AMD CEO, Lisa Su, that Zen 3 is still coming sometime later this year.
In a video released via Twitter, Su spent a brief amount of time talking about how well things have gone for AMD in recent times as well as the company’s vision for Ryzen. As she put it, ‘we’re always on a journey, a journey to push the highest performance that we can for our users and our fans‘ following up by pointing out that ‘Zen 3 is exactly that.‘
She didn’t go so far as to announce a release date for Zen 3 but explained that it’s ‘looking great in the labs’ and ‘we’re on track to launch later this year‘. 7th July marked a year since AMD launched Zen 2 in the form of its Ryzen 3000 processors which is why the XT processors also launched on that date this year. It seems likely that this was a bit of a check-in video to just remind us all that yes, Zen 3 is still coming. That’s probably all the more important given the relatively volatile world we’re living in right now where delays aren’t that uncommon.
Initially, it seemed likely that Zen 3 would be unveiled at Computex in Taipei but as that’s now been cancelled altogether, AMD is going to be reliant on some kind of separate announcement or event. Again, it makes sense to build up some hype via such Twitter/YouTube announcements as the one yesterday.
Zen 3 is expected to be a huge change to the Zen architecture as we know it with the use of a superior TSMC’s 7nm enhanced process node than we’ve seen before. That should mean better performance, lower power or a mixture of both (surely both), as is customary really with such improvements. Understandably, those keen to upgrade their systems are waiting around to see what to do next so a release date would be quite useful by now. For now though, Su and AMD are keeping their cards close to their chest.
As a side note, Su also told us of a baby somewhere in the world named Ryzen, presumably after the processors. At least it’s a better idea than Threadripper, we guess.