AMD made a huge statement, or an announcement rather, during their Financial Analyst Day that they are ready to fight Intel & Nvidia with their upcoming products – Figuratively speaking. AMD Chief Executive Dr. Lisa Su, said that the talk of the town AMD “Zen” CPUs are slated to be launched next year, featuring 40% faster IPC performance over AMD’s Excavator based CPUs. AMD had a reason to make these claims, since they wanted to regain market share in the CPU department.
The same thing goes for their GPUs, as the company vows to impress gamers with their soom to be launched HBM equipped GFX cards. AMD confirms that these card are slated to be released just before Windows 10 hits, along with the DirectX 12 ready titles so it might be a strong launch for the company provided that all goes well as planned.
New Socket, New Possibilities
AM4 is the new socket type for the AMD Zen CPU, with a chipset that features DDR4 support and APU compatibility. Yup, AMD’s Zen CPUs will come in CPU only package, as well as in an APU package, both supported by the upcoming AM4 socket for unification capabilities. Clearly, AMD is still continuing their APUs for the desktop, and Zen might surprise us as well in the CPU + GPU hybrid department.
In addition, there will be a Zen+ variant coming sometime after the Zen CPUs, and it’s reportedly under the work as said by Mark Papermaster, one of AMD’s top engineers. That said, Zen might be really close to us, and maybe we’ll start seeing these chips starting Q1 of 2016, which is not a bad time considering that consumers are generally high on budget within that season.
AMD Zen Will Cost an ARM:
AMD had to speed things up if they wanted to keep their promises, and it seems that to do so, they have to delay Project Skybridge (AMD’s 64-bit ARM) to make way for the faster deliverance of the Zen CPUs next year.
It aint bad, as they promised to continue their ARM chip development which is most probably before Zen is ready for finalization. One might remember that AMD is boasting its development of the Skybridge, since it aims to bring x86 and ARM computing together on a common platform which is comprehensively sleek. I hope they will still deliver, but it might depend on the success of the Zen CPUs/APUs.
Gunning for the Gaming Crowd:
AMD at its core appears to shift again its focus to the high-end consumers, and there’s no better way to reintroduce themselves than with a capable GFX card which is a proper appetizer for things to come. HBM seems to be the foundation of AMD’s much awaited return after years of re-brands, and small yet significant increments to overall performance & efficiency, so we are pretty excited as to what it might offer especially if we’re talking about the Fiji based GPUs. – The first of the HBM equipped GPUs coming this year.
AMD is also investing further in the VR, Immersive Platforms & Technologies, plus Software and API technologies which should translate well for the needs of gamers. Nvidia also admit that AMD is still strongly competitive, but lacks the necessary software technologies & eco-system integration. AMD really needs focus on those points this year and try to win the majority.
In the end, AMD has a lot of things to do to in order to be on the offensive, and key decisions have to be made to make sure that their efforts are worthy of the investment. But one thing’s for sure, and that’s the hype they have to deal with since the Financial Analyst Day. With AAA title games, Windows 10, DirectX 12, and VR looming this year, it is imperative to make things right this time.
