AMD Officially Talks Zen 2 CPU Architecture: Significant Performance Uplift With 2X Throughput, Doubled Core Density With Up To 64 Cores, PCIe Gen 4.0 Support, Aiming Server EPYC Rome 7nm CPUs First

With EPYC Rome, AMD skipped 10nm and went straight for 7nm. They have tapped in TSMC to produce the chips for them which gives them an edge over the previous partner, GloFo (Global Foundries).

AMD has made significant changes to their CPU architecture which help deliver twice the throughput of their first generation Zen architecture. The major points include an entirely redesigned execution pipeline, major floating point advances with doubled the floating point to 256-bit and double bandwidth for load/store units. One of the key upgrades for Zen 2 is the doubling of the core density which means we are now looking at 2x the core count for each core complex (CCX).

AMD confirmed that the EPYC Rome series server processors would make use of eight 7nm CPU chiplets which will be connected to a large I/O die. The CPU chiplets will be able to house up to 64 cores and 128 threads.

Additionally, the company shared that its follow-on 7nm+-based “Zen 3” and “Zen 4” x86 core architectures are on-track.