AMD confirms it won’t be following Intel’s hybrid cores approach

In an interview with TechpowerUp, AMD stated that they will not follow Intel’s approach to hybrid cores and architectures, and also discussed what to anticipate from Zen 5 CPUs. David McAfee, AMD’s Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Client Channel Business, spoke about the company’s present portfolio, new products, and plans to expand on it.

The discussion began with AMD’s Ryzen AI, which is a key component of the new Ryzen 7040 mainstream laptop series nicknamed “Phoenix.” David goes into great detail about Ryzen AI, and it is well worth a read over at TPU.

David’s most significant discovery concerns their hybrid CPU architecture. AMD now offers two types of Zen 4 cores: conventional Zen 4 and density-optimized Zen 4C.

David claims that one approach to hybrid is to use P-Core and E-Core, but that is not what the red team intends to do. The reasoning is that having two separate cores with varied ISA capabilities makes fine-tuning the OS and programs around the proper cores more difficult.

Intel handles this with Thread Director technology, but AMD appears to intend to use comparable but distinctly tailored architectures for its hybrid approach.

We know that the Zen 4 and Zen 4C have the same ISA with minor differences that do not result in an entirely new processor. It is also critical to ensure that the correct core is scheduled for the correct tasks. AMD sees little value for such cores on unconstrained platforms like desktops but believes they can provide a significant advantage in restricted architectures like laptops.

It is expected that AMD’s hybrid approach will be embraced considerably more swiftly in the laptop market, with the first models releasing alongside the impending Strix Point family of APUs.

David also discusses Zen 5 and how they are working hard to bring their freshest and greatest architecture to desktops as soon as possible. The chip design is already on schedule for the 2024 release as the Ryzen 8000 Desktop CPUs with additional RDNA 3.5 graphics cores.

The excess of cores will not result in linear performance. Such a design will result in performance regression, which is a drawback of dual-channel memory devices. So, whenever faster memory is available on these platforms for better bandwidth, we may see another jump in core counts, but it appears that the Zen 5 lineup will remain at 16 cores for the time being.

And, on the x86S subject, which was recently offered by Intel as a way to pave the way for 64-bit only architectures, AMD says that they are looking into it and have been reviewing similar concepts for a long time and find Intel’s proposal quite intriguing.

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