Well, it’s no secret that AMD is all set to bring its Zen 4 architecture sometime next year, and that doesn’t mean we will not talk about it now.
The Zen 4 is a massive leap from the current Zen 3 because we may not see a Zen 3+ refresh for desktops this time, and this makes 5nm based Zen 4 based Ryzen 7000 processors codenamed Raphael even more improtant.
The last major leak by HXL revealed that AMD Zen 4 based CPUs could feature up to 24 cores and will be based on TSMC’s N5 or 5nm process node. Whereas @ExecuFix also predicted that AMD’s AM5 platform would feature an LGA1718 socket.
This means, much like Intel, AMD will be changing the socket type from PGA to LGA (land grid array), so there will be no pins on the next-gen AMD processors; however, pins will be located on the motherboard socket itself. The leaker also assumed that AM5 would support dual-channel DDR5 memory, with no PCI Express Gen5 support.
It has also been confirmed that next-gen Zen 4 or Raphael CPUs will be retaining the same 40×40 mm die size. Now, ExecutableFix has entirely revealed the LGA pads layout of the next-gen AMD consumer desktop processors based on the new 5nm process.
These new AMD Raphael CPUs will feature 120W TDP; however, we could also see a 170W variant, which could be some kind of a special edition. The CPU will feature up to 28 PCI Express lanes, a handsome upgrade over Zen 3, which had 24.
However, sticking to the PCIe Gen4 standard makes sense as AMD sees no practical application of Gen5, making their CPUs and motherboards even more costly. Although the exact specifications of Raphael CPUs are not known yet, the layout of the chiplets will surely be changed and AMD managing to put more compute dies on the package.
Warhol seems less unlikely for desktops, and it seems AMD isn’t looking to Intel’s Alder Lake but focus on putting a nice performance jump with Zen 4 next year and compete with Raptor Lake. Also, the same architecture will be used on AMD’s upcoming EPYC Genoa server processors.
