AMD's AM4 socket for Bristol Ridge and Zen CPUs may be released in October. Rumors from AMD's motherboard partners suggest that the chip manufacturer's upcoming motherboards will debut specific design improvements such as a new cache hierarchy, improved branch prediction and simultaneous multithreading.
AMD's latest X86-based microprocessor core, known as Zen, has been designed from scratch that will allow a 40 percent improvement in instructions per clock, which means a stronger core. It's a pretty big deal if the AMD AM4 socket really pans out.
Power improvements include ability to turn off power in parts of the chip that aren't being used, writes Embedded Computing Design. As a result of these improvements, uses can expect better predictions of what kind of data is being employed, much faster data fetching and processing of more simultaneous instructions in the AMD AM4 socket.
Moreover, AMD has claimed that these changes will allow parts to operate in fan-less systems, which is quite a deal for high-end CPUs. Other features of AMD AM4 socket include dedicated PCIe Gen 3 lanes, DDR4 memory, SATA Express, NVMe and 10-Gbit/s USB 3.1 Gen2.
There will be a 32-core, 64-thread Zen-based server processor in the AMD AM4 socket that has been named Naples. This part would run the Windows Server operating system as part of a dual-processor server.
There are multiple architectural advances in the Zen core for increasing performance all the way and also increase efficiency when installed the upcoming microprocessors. One of the ways Zen will be implemented is through an eight-core, 16-thread desktop processor (known as the Summit Ridge).
AMD believes the Summit Ridge will outperform a similarly configured eight-core, 16-thread Intel Broadwell-E processor if running the multi-threaded Blender. This will render the software with both CPUs, set to the same clock speed.
This Summit Ridge uses the AMD AM4 socket, which is compatible with seventh-generation AMD A-Series desktop processors. It will provide scalability to the entire line of products. The first desktop systems with the AMD AM4 sockets and A-series processors are expected to ship in the second half of this year, writes iTech Post.
